Porous gel polymer electrolyte for the solid state metal oxide supercapacitor with a wide potential window

Abstract

The potential window plays an important role in the performance of a supercapacitor and the gel polymer electrolyte (GPE) is the widespread interest in this context. GP electrolytes have high ionic conductivity, excellent electrochemical stability, and suitable ion transfer. So, in this work, the porous poly(acrylonitrile-polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane) (P(A-POS)) membrane electrolyte has been proposed for the metal oxide-based supercapacitors. The porous membrane was synthesized via the phase inversion process and after the liquid organic electrolyte uptake, it was used as GPE in Co3O4 nanoribbon/activated carbon asymmetric supercapacitor. The positive electrode based on Co3O4 nanoribbon (NR-Co3O4) offered a high specific capacitance of 2380.4 mF cm−2 at a current density of 2 mA cm−2 and the organic liquid electrolyte uptake of (P(A-POS)) membrane was 405%. The results indicated that the supercapacitor with NR-Co3O4 positive electrode and (P(A-POS)) porous membrane shows wide potential window of 4 V and low charge transfer resistance of 1.1 Ω in a solid-state asymmetric supercapacitor.