A high performance flexible recyclable supercapacitor with polyaniline by casting in unconventional proportion

Abstract

A new type of recyclable flexible solid-state supercapacitor with good electrochemical performance and folder ability is produced through a facile method. Polyvinylidene fluoride - acetylene black - polyethylene glycol - polyaniline (PVDF-AB-PEG-PANI) film electrode with excellent processability and tailorability is prepared by casting strategy, which uses large amount of PVDF as film former. The new electrode has good performance with excellent flexibility (dr < 1 mm and capacity retention 97.4 % after folding 1000 times) and electrochemical performance (It can utilize the active substance efficiently that it closes to the theoretical value, with high areal capacitance of 890.44 mF cm−2 and volumetric capacitance of 89.04 F cm−3). A capacitance retention of 72.5 % is obtained for the supercapacitor based on this electrode after 5000 charging/discharging cycles, even polyaniline is synthesized by conventional method. The most interesting thing is that, the supercapacitor based on this electrode can easily be recycled and reused (capacity retention 97.1 % after 4 recycle times).