Morphological Study and Electrochemical properties of Ruthenium Oxide Thin Film

There is a growing necessity of transition metal oxide thin film for many important technological applications such as smart windows gas sensors, solar cells, super capacitors etc. Among the other transition metal oxides, ruthenium oxide is a potential material as it exhibits interesting structural, optical, chemical, electrical properties. In this investigation ruthenium oxide thin films have been synthesized using spin coating technique. Here ruthenium oxide thin films have been deposited on stainless steel substrate by sol-gel spin coating method. Thin film properties of deposited samples were studied by XRD, SEM, FTIR, EDAX. AFM. The cyclic voltammetry study and chronopotentiometry was carried out with 0.1M KOH electrolyte to study the supercapacitor properties. © 2017 Elixir All rights reserved. Elixir Thin Film Tech. 106 (2017) 46798-46801 Thin Film Technology Available online at www.elixirpublishers.com (Elixir International Journal) S.D. Gothe et al./ Elixir Thin Film Tech. 106 (2017) 46798-46801 46799 2) Surface Morphological Analysis The surface morphological study of the RuO2 thin film has been carried out from SEM image. Figure 2 shows scanning electron microscopic (SEM) photographs of ruthenium oxide thin films at different magnifications. It showed that the substrate is well covered with RuO2 material. The SEM image shows non-uniformly distributed aggregates giving rise to a high surface roughness. The porous morphologies clearly found on these annealed RuO2 films which is favourable for penetration of electrolyte. In the inset, one can see the particles are well connected yet provide porous structure, which is much required for supercapacitors. The rough texture represents the grain boundary surfaces. The size of grains laid in the range 170 – 182.2 nm. In electrochemical supercapacitors, an increased amount of charge can be stored on the highly extended surface area created by large number of pores within a high surface area electrode material. Nano crystalline and porous materials as electrode material exhibit good electrochemical performance because these materials possess both a high surface area and pores which are adapted to the size of ions.