High‐Strength Self‐Healable Supercapacitor Based on Supramolecular Polymer Hydrogel with Upper Critical Solubility Temperature

Abstract

AbstractHere, poly(N‐acryloylglycinamide‐co‐vinyltriazole) p(NAGA‐co‐VTZ) supramolecular polymer hydrogel doped with carbonized and activated polypyrrole nanotubes as a high‐strength self‐healable material is presented for supercapacitors. Initially, the p(NAGA‐co‐VTZ) hydrogel films are synthesized by photopolymerization of N‐acryloylglycinamide and 1‐vinyl‐1,2,4‐triazole without the use of any cross‐linkers. The hydrogels demonstrated remarkable self‐healing ability via hydrogen bonding at temperatures above upper critical solubility temperature, excellent mechanical properties (0.86 MPa), large stretchability (1300%) and cut resistance. Subsequently, carbonized and ethanol/KOH‐activated polypyrrole nanotubes (acNTs) are prepared as the active material for electrochemical double‐layer capacitors (EDLC). Then, a symmetric self‐healable supercapacitor employing p(NAGA‐co‐VTZ) hydrogel, acNTs and aqueous 3 m KCl solution is assembled. Cyclic voltammetry and galvanostatic charge–discharge measurements show that the prepared device gives a specific capacitance of 282.62 F g−1 at 0.2 A g−1 and a high areal capacitance of 316.86 mF cm−2 at a scan rate of 10 mV s−1. Importantly, the supercapacitor operates over a wide voltage window (0–1.2 V) and provides excellent cyclic performance with capacitance retention of 97% after 10 000 cycles and 94% after self‐healing. In summary, the developed self‐healable supercapacitor exhibits considerable potential as a high‐performance energy storage device.