Fabrication and enhanced electrochemical properties of α-MoO3 nanobelts using dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid as both reactant and surfactant

In this work, we introduce a simple approach to fabricate orthorhombic MoO3 (alpha-MoO3) nanobelts using sodium molybdate and dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid (DBSA). Importantly, DBSA not only acts as a reagent to provide H+, but also serves as a surfactant to stabilize and manipulate the morphology of the as-obtained products. Themorphology, chemical composition and crystal structure of the as-prepared alpha-MoO3 nanobelts were systematically characterized by scanning electronmicroscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy, selected area electron diffraction, X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy (including high-resolution imaging), Fourier transformation infrared spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The results show that the dimensions of the as-prepared alpha-MoO3 nanobelts are 150-350 nm in width, 50-70 nm in thickness and 1-5 mu m in length. Moreover, the electrochemical properties of the samples were analyzed utilizing cyclic voltammetry (CV), chronopotentiometry (CP) and AC impedance in a 0.5 M aqueous Li2SO4 solution. These studies reveal that the maximum specific capacitance of the alpha-MoO3 nanobelts is much higher than those MoO3 nanomaterials in recently reported papers. Furthermore, the charge-discharge stability measurements indicate a retention of specific capacitance of about 95% after 500 continuous charge-discharge cycles at a current density of 0.25 A g(-1), demonstrating that the as-prepared alpha-MoO3 nanobelts can serve as most excellent electrode materials for supercapacitors.