LAUSR

Abstract Copper sulphide nanocrystals (NCs) and their derivatives are rapidly gaining attention of researchers due to wide variety of exciting physical properties. These properties can be further tuned by varying morphology and incorporation of suitable elements. Here, we report a simple and facile method for the synthesis of hierarchical flower shape CuS containing 30–40 nm thick nanosheets and Ni–CuS nanocomposite with varying molar ratio of Ni to CuS. It is observed that the formation of hierarchical flower shape of CuS is significantly depend on the type of sulfur source and metal to sulfur precursor ratio. The incorporation of uniformly decorated nickel particles on CuS micro flowers increased electrochemically active sites leading to better ion diffusion kinetics. Further, the specific capacitance value of Ni–CuS (molar ratio of 0.6:1) reflected significant enhancement, more than three times (464.03 F/g at 2 A/g), than the pure CuS (132.89 F/g at 2 A/g) submicron flowers with excellent cyclic stability.