Hydrothermal deposition of CoS nanostructures and its multifunctional applications in supercapattery and water electrolyzer

Abstract The development of sustainable energy conversion and storage systems is on demand to ease the energy needs and restrict environmental pollution. Here, we account a unique multifunctional flake-like CoS deposited over the flexible carbon cloth (CoS@CC) by a facile hydrothermal technique. The single-phase hexagonal structured CoS@CC with high crystallinity was identified through the XRD analysis. The morphological feature portrays the uniform distribution of flake-like CoS over carbon cloth. The electrocatalytic properties of the prepared flake-like CoS (CoS@CC) suggests improved electroactivity of requiring minimal overpotentials of 280 mV (OER) and 264 mV (HER) to accomplish a pre-eminent current density of 20 mA cm−2. In addition, a lab-scale water splitting system was projected to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm−2 with a low cell voltage of 1.65 V. In view to driving the fabricated water splitting system, a flexible (CoS@CC||rGO) supercapattery was fabricated to deliver an improved specific energy of 38 Wh kg−1 at a superior specific power of 533 W kg−1. Therefore, the prepared CoS@CC electrode with improved flexibility, useful catalytic activity, expressive kinetics, and resilient strength serves as a multifunctional material for prospective energy conversion and storage systems.