High Performance Supercapacitor Applications and DC Electrical Conductivity Retention on Surfactant Immobilized Macroporous Ternary Polypyrrole/Graphitic-C3N4@Graphene Nanocomposite

Abstract

Electrically conductive conducting polymer nanocomposites with carbonaceous materials have attraction the attention worldwide in resolving the energy crisis for economic reasons, ease of fabrication and easily controllable variable redox chemical states. In this work, highly conducting polypyrrole/g-C3N4@graphene (PPy/g-C3N4@GN) has been fabricated by polymerizing pyrrole with g-C3N4 along with surfactant para toluene sulfonic acid (pTSA) and later incorporating it with GN by hydrothermal methodology to form a macroporous network of pTSA doped PPy/g-C3N4@GN. Thus prepared PPy/g-C3N4@GN composite was characterized for the morphological characterizations by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy while the structural characterizations were done by X-ray powder diffraction and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The morphological analysis showed that the PPy and g-C3N4 were well distributed inside the GN sheets thereby forming structures of high porosity. The PPy and g-C3N4 were sandwiched between the sheets of GN and such morphology is expected to promote the electron transfer. The PPy/g-C3N4@GN composite showed high conductivity of 8.8 S/cm and exceptionally high thermal stability in aging thermal conductivity experiments. The high conductivity and stability is attributed to the contribution of following factors i.e. the high stability of g-C3N4, high conductivity of GN and PPy. Three electrode assembly was used to study the electrochemical supercapacitive characteristics; cyclic voltammetric curves and galvanostatic charge discharge measurements of PPy/g-C3N4@GN. The obtained nanocomposite delivered high capacitance of 260.4 F g−1 at a current load of 1 A g−1 as well as excellent 80% cyclic stability after the continuous 2000 charge discharge cycles. The enhanced performance is due the interaction between all the constituents in the present nanocomposites and improved electrical conductivity.