Highly Capacitive Mesoporous Polyaniline Spheres as Scalable and High Electrochemical Performance Supercapacitor Electrode

Abstract

AbstractThis article demonstrates morphological based fabrication of Polyaniline mesopores (PANIMS) via the standard polymerization approach using Triton as an additive and 0.1 M H2SO4 as an electrolyte to achieve improved specific capacity (736 F g−1) in contrast to reported bulk PANI as well as PANI sphere morphologies. PANIMS1 exhibit long cyclic stability and capacitive retention ∼83 % in 0.1 M H2SO4 electrolyte after 5000 cycles. This easy and low‐cost fabrication of PANIMS was conducted by varying minimal amount of Triton in 0.1 M H2SO4 electrolyte solution to form mesopores. The adsorption and desorption isotherm of the mesopores suggests a specific surface area of 50.9 m2 g−1with a pore diameter of 2.2 nm. The protocol followed to form these PANIMS involves the variation of surfactant Triton to achieve sphere morphology thereby enhancing the charge storage property of PANI. These spheres also possess an enhanced electrical conductivity to be around ∼23 S/m than their bulk counterpart. The electrochemical assays show that there is excellent electrolyte ion penetration in the H2SO4 electrolyte which promotes a rapid ion transport to the PANIMS active sites. Also, a low value of Rct ∼2.17 Ω helps in giving a good capacitive performance of the PANIMS1 electrode. The electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) analysis shows a phase degree at 68°, response frequency at 0.38 Hz and time constant at 2.63 s. The study shows the present mesopores morphology of PANI projects to be one of the good electrode candidates for supercapacitor applications.