Polyaniline-coated freestanding porous carbon nanofibers as efficient hybrid electrodes for supercapacitors
By Chau Tran and Richa Singhal and Daniel Lawrence and Vibha Kalra
Published in Journal of Power Sources
2015
Abstract
Three-dimensional, free-standing, hybrid supercapacitor electrodes combining polyaniline (PANI) and porous carbon nanofibers (P-CNFs) were fabricated with the aim to integrate the benefits of both electric double layer capacitors (high power, cyclability) and pseudocapacitors (high energy density). A systematic investigation of three different electropolymerization techniques, namely, potentiodynamic, potentiostatic, and galvanostatic, for electrodeposition of \PANI\ on freestanding carbon nanofiber mats was conducted. It was found that the galvanostatic method, where the current density is kept constant and can be easily controlled facilitates conformal and uniform coating of \PANI\ on three-dimensional carbon nanofiber substrates. The electrochemical tests indicated that the PANI-coated P-CNFs exhibit excellent specific capacitance of 366