Asymmetric supercapacitor devices based on dendritic conducting polymer and activated carbon

Abstract

Dendritic conducting polymers(CPs) are a novel class of porous pseudocapacitive electrode materials assembled with the combination of highly reversible redox active triphenylamine(TPA) and thiophene, 3-methylthiophene, selenophene and thieno[3,2-b]thiophen moieties. Due to the unique combination of three dimensional conducting network, fast redox reversible reactions, porous morphology, high thermal and electrochemical stability have fetched these pseudocapacitive polymers to exhibit high specific capacitance and emerged as an ideal candidate for energy storage devices. The electrochemical performance of as-prepared polymers showed specific capacitance of 278, 257, 246 and 315 Fg−1 for poly tris[4-(2-thienyl)phenyl]amine (P1), poly tris(4-(3-methylthiophene-2-yl)phenyl)amine (P2), poly tris(4-(selenophen-2-yl)phenyl)amine (P3) and poly tris(4-thieno[3,2-b]thiophen-2-yl) phenyl)amine (P4) respectively with low internal resistance. An insertion of selenophene and thieno(3,2-b)thiophene linkers in TPA block showed enhanced electrochemical performance than the thiophene-TPA pair. Furthermore, asymmetric supercapacitors were assembled with the polymer as cathode and activated carbon as an anode and the detailed electrochemical characterizations has been investigated. This research may shed light on designing new redox active psuedocapacitors and other electrochemical devices.