z Energy Technology & Environmental Science
La
2
Ti
2
O
7
As Nanometric Electrode Material: An Emerging
Candidate For Supercapacitor Performance
Amtul Nashim
+
,
[a]
Soumyashree Pany
+
,
[a]
K. M. Parida,*
[a]
and J. Nanda
[b]
In this study, first time the nanometric powder of La
2
Ti
2
O
7
(abbreviated as LTO) is taken as the electrode material for
supercapacitor. The prepared material is characterized by
various characterization techniques to know its structural and
textural properties. The specific capacitance of the La
2
Ti
2
O
7
is
calculated from charge discharge curve. The Nyquist plot, bode
plot and the plot of real capacitance vs. imaginary capacitance
is well in support of supercapacitive activity of La
2
Ti
2
O
7
. The
La
2
Ti
2
O
7
exhibits 71 F/g of specific capacitance in 2 M KOH with
95.7% retention after 5000 cycles is due to the effective access
of electrolyte to the redox sites owing to its layered structure.
As these finding are new to the scientific community and
demonstrate the great potential of La
2
Ti
2
O
7
as electrode
material for supercapacitor, the current findings may give a
new pave in the area of supercapacitor research.
1. Introduction
For the past few decades, energy production from renewable
resources is the main topic of concern. Beside this, its storage
and production (when required) is drawing the attention of
many researchers. Hence, supercapacitor will be considered as
the promising energy storage device, in the forth coming years
which would bridge the gap between conventional capacitor
and batteries. In this regards, many research work has been
devoted to develop electrode materials for supercapacitor
application with high specific capacitance, fast charging
discharging, high power and energy density with long cyclic
life.
[1]
Usually, supercapacitor are classified into two types (a)
EDLC (electric double layer capacitor) and (b) pseudocapacitor.
An EDLC stores charges by reversible adsorption of ions, and
where as the mechanism of storage of charge in a pseudocapa-
citor is due to fast surface reversible redox reaction.
[2]
The use
of transitional metal oxides like MnO
2
, NiO, V
2
O
5
, Co
3
O
4
, RuO
2
,
TiO
2
, etc as electrodes have been increased in recent years
owing to its high specific capacitance, high energy density and
structural flexibility.
[3]
But there are some bottle neck like low
conductivity, short cyclic stability, low energy and power
density etc. which needs to be improved upon. The current
research also focuses on ternary metal oxides like NiCo
2
O
4
,
ZnCo
2
O
4
and Zn
2
SnO
4
, which is emerging as a promising and
low cost pseudocapacitive material. As ternary metal oxides
posses multiple oxidation states it shows higher supercapaci-
tive activity than their corresponding binary systems. Here, in
ternary system both the cations are responsible for the
electrochemical energy storage.
[4]
Besides transitional metal
oxides, the work on rare earth metal oxides is also attracting
the researchers. C.D. Lokhande et al. prepared SSSD (symmetric
solid state supercapacitor device) with La
2
O
3
thin film. Further
they also studied the porous honey comb like La
2
O
3
doped
graphitic porous carbon and MnO
2
/La
2
O
3
microsphere for
supercapacitor activity.
[5]
Eu
2
O
3
,Y
2
O
3
, Nb
2
O
5
, CeO
2
etc. are few
examples of other rare earth metal oxides which are used as a
electrode material for the supercapacitor either in the native
form or with composite with some other materials.
[6]
X. U. Feng
et al used rare earth metal in their work on colloidal
supercapacitor.
[7]
To the best of our knowledge, hardly any
report is there on ternary based rare earth systems for
supercapacitor activity. La
2
Sn
1.6
Zr
0.4
O
7
nanocrystalline pyro-
chlore shows 74 F/g of specific capacitance at 1 mA/cm
2
as
calculated from charge-discharge curve.
[8]
Co
2
P
2
O
7
, Mn
2
P
2
O
7
and Ni
2
P
2
O
7
are few transitional metal based polyphosphates
which are considered as the interesting electrode materials for
supercapacitor performance.
[9]
Mn-doped Rb
2
Ru
1.5
Mn
0.5
O
7-δ
,
La
2
Sn
2
O
7-δ
, La
2
Zr
2
O
7-δ
etc. are the examples of active pyrochlore
materials for oxygen reduction reaction.
[10]
Recently, Lithium
Lanthanum Titanates is used as an additive for the
enhancement of the performance of Lithium ion batteries.
[11]
Nanometric La
2
Ti
2
O
7
powder is considered as the novel
negative electrode materials for Ni/oxide rechargeable
batteries.
[12]
Currently, many researches have been carried out
on battery-type electrode materials which have high redox
behaviour and used for supercapacitor applications.
[13]
The
battery behaviour of La
2
Ti
2
O
7
is known but the performance of
La
2
Ti
2
O
7
as active electrode material for supercapacitor applica-
tion is not known to the scientific community.
[a] Dr. A. Nashim,
+
Dr. S. Pany,
+
K. M. Parida
Centre for Nano Science and Nano Technology, Institute of Technical
Education and Research, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (Deemed to be
University), Bhubaneswar, 751030, India
E-mail: kulamaniparida@soauniversity.ac.in
amtulnokt@gmail.com
soumya.pany84@gmail.com
[b] Prof. J. Nanda
Department of Physics, Institute of Technical Education and Research,
Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (Deemed to be University), Bhubaneswar, 751030,
India
E-mail: jyotirmayeenanda@soauniversity.ac.in
[
+
] Authors have equal contribution
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW under
https://doi.org/10.1002/slct.201903227
Full Papers DOI: 10.1002/slct.201903227
12037 ChemistrySelect 2019, 4,12037–12042 © 2019 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim