Supercapacitive performance of vanadium sulfide deposited on stainless steel mesh: effect of etching

Vanadium sulfide (VS2) nanomaterials have been deposited on surface-modified stainless steel mesh (SMSSM) by facial hydrothermal method and subsequent effects of acidic etching on surface morphology and supercapacitive performance of the electrode were studied. The acid etching process improves the coupling interaction between the stainless steel mesh and active materials. The optimized 1% etched SMSSM with VS2 (1%/VS2) loaded electrode reveals the porous fine nanoparticles composed surface nanostructure. The prepared 1%/VS2 electrode exhibited an excellent areal capacitance of 45.83 mF/cm2, which is two times higher than that of a non-etched VS2 loaded electrode. These results showed that the acidic etching process significantly improved the surface nanostructure of the VS2 material that improved the capacitance of the SMSSM substrate.