Surfactant template preparation of NiO nanocrystals using a gas-liquid diffusion method and electrochemical performance

The NiO nanocrystal was fabricated using the gas–liquid diffusion method with sodium dodecyl sulfate and hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide were chosen as the template, respectively. This method not only improved the morphology of NiO nanocrystal, but also increased its specific capacitances. The electrochemical test indicated that the dandelion-shaped NiO nanocrystal which prepared with sodium dodecyl sulfate exhibited obvious pseudo-capacitance reaction and possess the specific capacitances of 922 F g⁻¹, which is significantly higher than that of 246 F g⁻¹ and 158 F g⁻¹ of NiO nanocrystals which were prepared with hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide and without template at 2 A g⁻¹.