Abstract
Poly(4-styrenesulfonate)-conducting polymer (PSS-CP) is advantageous for thin-film electrode manufacturing due to its high conductivity, high charge storage, structural stability, and excellent ink dispersion. In this work, comparative studies of two-electrode symmetric supercapacitors using Polypyrrole:Poly(4-styrenesulfonate) (PPy:PSS), with different molecular weights (Mw’s) of Poly(4-styrenesulfonate) (PSS) as the electrodes, were performed. PPy:PSS can be easily prepared using a simple solution process that enables the mass production of thin-film electrodes with improved electrical and electrochemical properties. As-prepared PPy:PSS, with different PSS molecular weights, were assembled into two-electrode supercapacitors based on coin cell structures. It was confirmed that the electrical and electrochemical properties of PPy:PSS were improved with increasing PSS molecular weight. The coin cell, using PPy:PSS with a PSS molecular weight of 1.0 × 106 g/mol, exhibited higher areal capacitance (175.3 mF/cm2), higher volumetric capacitance (584.2 F/cm3), and longer cycling stability (86.3% after 5000 cycles) compared to those of PPy:PSS with PSS molecular weights of 2.0 × 105 and 7.0 × 104 g/mol. This work provides an efficient approach for producing cost-effective and miniaturized supercapacitors with high conductivity and high specific capacitance for practical applications in a variety of electronic devices.
Highlights
Conducting polymers (CPs) are defined as polymers that can conduct electricity and have the inherent properties of polymers, such as processability, flexibility, and a low unit cost [1]
The para-directed polymerization of conducting polymers is promoted by a lower polymerization temperature [13]
The average particle sizes of the samples containing PSS with average molecular weights of 1.0 × 106 (PPy100), 2.0 × 105 (PPy20), and 7.0 × 104 g/mol (PPy7) were 300 ± 40, 200 ± 30, and 100 ± 30 nm, respectively. These results indicate that the size of the PPy particles increases with an increased molecular weight of PSS
Summary
Conducting polymers (CPs) are defined as polymers that can conduct electricity and have the inherent properties of polymers, such as processability, flexibility, and a low unit cost [1] Due to these advantages of CPs, p-type CPs, such as polypyrrole (PPy), polyaniline (PANI), polythiophene (PT), and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT), have attracted much interest as fascinating electrode materials in practical applications, including supercapacitors [2,3,4,5,6,7], sensors [8,9,10,11], solar cells [12,13,14,15], thin-film transistors [16,17,18], and smart windows [7,19,20].
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