Investigation of mixed molybdates of cobalt and nickel for use as electrode materials in alkaline solution

Abstract Mixed molybdates of cobaltand nickel with compositional formulae Co1-xNixMoO4 (where x = 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0) have been synthesized by microwave-assisted co-precipitation method and examined aselectrocatalysts for oxidation of methanol and water and as supercapacitors in 1.0 M KOH.Cyclic (CV) andlinear sweep (LSV) voltammetriesand chronoamperometry techniques were used in the investigation. Structural and surface characterizations of materials were performed by XRD,Raman, SEM, HRTEM andXPS.The study has shown that introduction of Ni for Co in the CoMoO4 matrix increases the catalytic activity towards methanol (164.5 mAcm−2) and water (90 mAcm−2) oxidations, the activity, however, being the greatest with 0.5 mol Ni. Also, the capacitance of this active electrode material (611 Fg-1) was found to be much superior to pure CoMoO4(140.6 Fg-1)or NiMoO4 (89.79 Fg-1).