Composite of graphene and in-situ polymerized polyaniline on carbon cloth substrate for flexible supercapacitor

Abstract

Flexible and lightweight energy storage is required for powering wearable electronic devices. Among the developed energy storage devices, supercapacitors have gained much interest as energy storage for wearable applications through their long cycle life and high power density. This work presents a flexible supercapacitor based on carbon cloth coated with graphene/polyaniline nanocomposite. Graphene/polyaniline nanocomposite is adopted as active material due to its high stability and the synergistic feature of pseudocapacitive and electrical double layer capacitance. The nanocomposite is synthesized from aniline and graphene in the sulfuric acid solution containing carbon cloth by chemical oxidative method, allowing the aniline to polymerize directly on the carbon cloth and graphene. Flexible supercapacitor devices with PVA/H2SO4 gel electrolyte exhibit an areal capacitance of 194.90 mF/cm2 at a scan rate of 5 mV/s. The device retains 77.21% of its initial capacitance after 500 cycles of cyclic voltammetry tests and exhibits a good performance during bending at 90° and 180°. This work demonstrates the potentials of carbon cloth-based supercapacitors for high-performance wearable supercapacitors.