Abstract
Mesoporous polyaniline-silica nanocomposites with a full interpenetrating structure for pseudocapacitors were synthesized via the vapor phase approach. The morphology and structure of the nanocomposites were deeply investigated by scanning electron microscopy, infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, thermal gravimetric analysis and nitrogen adsorption-desorption tests. The results present that the mesoporous nanocomposites possess a uniform particle morphology and full interpenetrating structure, leading to a continuous conductive polyaniline network with a large specific surface area. The electrochemical performances of the nanocomposites were tested in a mixed solution of sulfuric acid and potassium iodide. With the merits of a large specific surface area and suitable pore size distribution, the nanocomposite showed a large specific capacitance (1702.68 farad (F)/g) due to its higher utilization of the active material. This amazing value is almost three-times larger than that of bulk polyaniline when the same mass of active material was used.
Highlights
As a new kind of electrochemical energy storage device, supercapacitors have attracted great attention, both in academic and practical applications, due to their excellent properties, such as sustainable cycling life, fast charging-discharging rate, high specific power and excellent cycle stability [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
The peaks centered at 1498 cm−1 and 1589 cm−1 are due to the C = C and C = N stretching of the benzenoid and quinoid rings, respectively
These typical absorption peaks confirm the existence of PANI in the nanocomposite
Summary
As a new kind of electrochemical energy storage device, supercapacitors have attracted great attention, both in academic and practical applications, due to their excellent properties, such as sustainable cycling life, fast charging-discharging rate, high specific power and excellent cycle stability [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. A nanocomposite of PANI and mesoporous silica preferably has a consecutive organic conductive network with a relative large effective specific surface area, if it were used as the pseudocapacitor electrode material. The excellent electrochemical performance of supercapacitors could be ascribed to an additional pseudocapacitive contribution of the electrochemically-active materials According to these results, an excellent electrochemical performance of supercapacitors would be obtained by utilizing a large effective specific surface area nanocomposite electrode material that possesses a consecutive conductive network, and a new composite electrolyte should preferably be used. This excellent value was almost three-times larger than that of the bulk PANI when the same weight of active material was used
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