A Facile one Pot Synthesis of MoO3 on Reduced Graphene Oxide (RGO) and Electrochemical Studies for Energy Applications

MoO3-RGO was synthesized by hydrothermal method and characterised by PXRD, FTIR, XPS, FESEM, EDX, Raman Spectroscopy and Cyclic Voltammetry (CV) techniques. The XRD study has informed about the single phase with a monoclinic structure having P1 211 space group, and also yielded the parameters a=5.5868 Ǻ, b=4.8396 Ǻ and c=5.5239 Ǻ through the Rietveld refinement technique using full proof. XPS and Raman spectroscopy studies have confirmed the in situ reductions of MoO3-RGO. FESEM reveals the elemental composition and it was estimated from EDX. The Electrochemical activity was tested by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and impendence spectroscopy (EIS). The comparative studies of Nyquist plot (EIS) of RGO, MoO3, MoO3-RGO imply the low solution resistance (RS=15.3 Ω) for MoO3-RGO. The Effective surface area of the MoO3-RGO found to be 4.8610−9cm−3S−1, which is a high value when compared to those of GO and RGO. The high capacity of MoO3-RGO composite of about 250 Fg−1 for small current density (0.1 Ag−1) strongly suggests this composite material for supercapacitor application. The catalytic property of this composite material for the oxidation of ethanol has been studied for varying concentration of ethanol between 0.004 M to 0.5 M in alkaline medium, which shows the effective oxidation with MoO3-RGO when compared to bare MoO3 electrode. Also it has been tested for oxidation of ethanol in acidic medium with 0.009 M to 0.5 M of H2SO4 and found to exhibit higher current response. It suggests that the MoO3-RGO would serve as a material of interest for energy (supercapacitor and fuel cell) application