Facile synthesis of mesoporous CoFe mixed oxide from MOF as advanced electrode material for supercapacitor

In this work, a submicron-sized mesoporous spinel ferrite (CoxFe3-xO4, MCFO) material derived from MOF was prepared through a convenient hydrothermal method and subsequent calcination stage. The optimized MCFO-1 material has a high specific surface area of 141.2 m2 g−1, surpassing most previously reported spinel ferrite materials. As electrode material for supercapacitor, it shows improved electrochemical properties with high specific capacity (973.1 F g−1 at 1 A g−1), which may be due to the sufficient active sites from highly mesoporous structure, and appropriate cooperativity of Co and Fe. Moreover, the submicron-sized structure effectively restrains the architecture collapse during repeated charge and discharge. Consequently, the specific capacity of MCFO-1 retained 72.9% of original capacity after 5000 cycles at 10 A g−1. These results indicate that the as-synthesized MCFO electrode material is one of the potential candidates for high-performance supercapacitor.