Porous flexible rGO films for electrochemical charge storage

•Polymer-RGO flexible films were prepared and subjected to gold ion irradiation.•Confocal Raman analysis revealed a redshift of the rGO bands on irradiation.•High suppression of rGO bands at 10 nm on irradiation confirmed by Raman depth.•At higher fluence, the specific capacitance was enhanced by 1.97 times than non-irradiated sample. Surface engineering of flexible films for electrochemical charge storage is scarce. Here polymer with rGO films was synthesized and subjected to gold ion irradiation with ion fluences via 1×1011, 5×1011, and 1×1012 ions/cm2. XRD revealed the reduction of crystallinity of films on irradiation. Confocal Raman depth disclosed the intensity of rGO bands is considerably suppressed at 10 nm in PrGO-115 than with the other samples. The minimum and maximum values of the specific capacitance of the Pr-GO-115 are 175 F/g and 337.5 F/g at 2 A/g and 1 A/g respectively and would be a potential candidate for electrochemical charge storage application.