In this study, Liu and co-workers reported a new strategy for the synthesis of polyaniline (PANI) nanostructures on a flexible G–carbon nanotube (G-CNT) composite paper substrate, which can be directly used as flexible electrodes possessing both electric double layer (EDL) capacitance and pseudocapacitance. The ternary hybrid paper exhibited a reversible capacity of up to 432 F g-1 at a discharge rate of 0.5 A g-1, which was much larger than that of bare G–CNT composite paper (172.4 F g-1); and its cyclic performance was dramatically enhanced, sustaining greater than 96% of its original capacitance after 600 charge–discharge cycles. Besides, the good electrical conductivity of the G–CNT composite paper provided improved conductive pathways for charge transfer at the electrodes thus resulting in superior capacitance during charge–discharge processes. Therefore, the method reported here provides a simple and efficient approach to fabricating G–CNT–PANI ternary hybrid papers with designed hierarchical nanostructures, and may be easily extended to the design of next generation high performance flexible supercapacitors.
All-carbon composite paper as a flexible conducting substrate for the direct growth of polyaniline particles and its applications in supercapacitors by Chao Zhang, Weng Weei Tjiu and Tianxi Liu Polym. Chem. 2013, 4, 5785-5792.
Julien Nicolas is a web-writer and advisory board member for Polymer Chemistry. He currently works at Univ. Paris-Sud (FR) as a CNRS researcher.
