Boosting hierarchical construction and charge storage capacity of polyaniline arrays grown on the surface of carbon cloth with the aid of graphene interlayer

Abstract

To satisfy the demands of high areal energy density for wearable devices, a strategy was presented to design hierarchical structured polyaniline (PANI) arrays on the surface of carbon cloth as the composite textile electrodes for lightweight and flexible supercapacitors. Benefiting from the introducing of graphene interlayer as conductive buffer layer and biomass organic acids including succinic acid, citric acid, malic acid, and tartaric acid as the dopants, the oriented growth of dense PANI array with hierarchical structure were greatly promoted especially in the presence of tartaric acid. Unique array structures constructed on the thin graphene layer significantly increase the specific surface area of the electrode, and facilitate the ion transport and dissipate stress from repeated polymeric volume change, resulting in considerably enhanced areal capacitance, rate retention and structural stability for PANI composite textile electrodes. The all–solid–state supercapacitor assembled with redox gel electrolyte possesses a high areal capacitance of up to 2181 mF cm−2 at the current density of 5 mA cm−2, and delivers a maximum energy density of 302.9 μWh cm−2 at the power density of 1752.1 μW cm−2 with excellent cycling stability and bending ability, thus demonstrating its great potential applications for wearable electronics.