Polyaniline&amp;#8211;polypyrrole nanocomposites using a green and porous wood as support for supercapacitors

Jian Li,Yue Jiao

doi:10.15302/j-fase-2019257

Abstract

Wood is an ideal type of support material whose porous structure and surface functional groups are beneficial for deposition of various guest substances for different applications. In this paper, wood is employed as a porous support, combined with two kinds of conductive polymers (i.e., polyaniline (PANI) and polypyrrole (PPy)) using an easy and fast liquid polymerization method. Scanning electron microscope observations indicate that the PANI–PPy complex consists of nanoparticles with a size of ~20 nm. The interactions between oxygen-containing groups of the wood and the nitrogen composition of PANI–PPy were verified by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The self-supported PANI–PPy/wood composite is capable of acting as a free-standing supercapacitor electrode, which delivers a high gravimetric specific capacitance of 360 F·g−1 at 0.2 A·g−1.

Highlights

Supercapacitors are a novel class of electrochemical energy storage systems, which have the ability to bridge the power/energy gap between traditional dielectric capacitors and batteries/fuel cells[1]
According to the difference in energy storage mechanisms, supercapacitors can be classified into two categories: electrical double-layer capacitor (EDLC) materials and pseudocapacitive materials[7]
The micromorphology changes in the wood support before and after the deposition of PANI and PPy were studied by SEM observations

Summary

Introduction

Supercapacitors are a novel class of electrochemical energy storage systems, which have the ability to bridge the power/energy gap between traditional dielectric capacitors and batteries/fuel cells[1]. Supercapacitor electrodes prepared with these conductive polymers have already exhibited numerous merits, such as high electrochemical activity and conductivity, good cost-effectiveness and easy of synthesis[10,11,12,13]. Because of their poor mechanical strength, difficulty in processing and handling, ease of agglomeration and low porosity, conductive polymers are widely combined with various host materials, e.g., carbon aerogels[14], cellulose nanofibrils[15] and cellulose paper[16]

Methods

Results

Conclusion