The electrocapacitive properties of polyaniline/VXC-72 composite electrodes

While polyaniline holds a great promise as an electrode material for pseudocapacitors, its poor stability against charge/discharge hinders its practical applications. In this work, polymerization of aniline was conducted in the presence of commercial carbon black VXC-72 to prepare polyaniline/VXC-72 composite electrodes. Results showed that the stability of the polyaniline/VXC-72 composite electrode was drastically improved with over 90% capacitance retention after 10,000 cycles at a current density of 2 A g(-1). It was found that VXC-72 particles played an important part in the chemical oxidative polymerisation process - they served not only as nucleation sites on which polymerization underwent to form polyaniline but also determined the morphology of the resultant solid product. The polyaniline/VXC-72 composite electrode materials with different contents of VXC-72 exhibited different morphologies and electrocapacitive performances. This research provides guidelines for designing polyaniline-carbon black composite electrode materials with an excellent stability against cycling, high capacitance, and low cost