Controlled chemical oxidative polymerization of conductive polyaniline with excellent pseudocapacitive properties

Abstract

Nowadays, the application of supercapacitor in energy storage is more and more extensive, and the selection and preparation of electrode material have become a formidable challenge. Polyaniline (PANI) has turned into one of the most hopeful conductive polymers due to its superior properties. In this article, conductive polyaniline was synthesized by chemical oxidative polymerization to acquire excellent electrochemical properties. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), cyclic voltammetry (CV), and galvanostatic charge–discharge (GCD) measurements were adopted to explore the microstructure and energy storage capacity. The PANI is in coralline network morphology with high surface area, which can supply more active sites during charge and discharge process. The PANI shows a high specific capacitance value of 790 F/g, and the highest conductivity is 15.5 S/cm. The consequence shows that PANI synthesized under certain conditions has a promising feasibility for applications in high-performance supercapacitor electrode material.