Functionalisation of fabrics with conducting polymer for tuning capacitance and fabrication of supercapacitor

► Well uniform polypyrrole-textile composite electrodes were prepared by in situ chemical polymerisation method. ► Composite formation was confirmed by SEM and FT-IR analysis. ► Compared the electrochemical performance of PPy coated natural and synthetic fibres. ► Obtained high specific capacitance of 260Fg−1 with PPy-Cotton textile electrode. Conducting polymer (polypyrrole (PPy) doped with anion) film has been coated on different textile substrates from a mild, room temperature wet in situ chemical polymerisation method exploiting pyrrole as a monomer and ferric chloride as an oxidant and compared their electrochemical capacitive behaviour by assembling as an unit cell supercapacitor. PPy composites were prepared with carbohydrate polymers like cotton, linen (Natural cellulosic fibre), modified cellulosic fibre-viscose rayon and synthetic polymer polyester fabrics to investigate the influence on electrochemical capacitance. The surface morphology and chemistry of these materials were analysed by SEM, FT-IR, and XRD. It reveals that the PPy has greater interaction with the cellulosic fabrics, but whereas surface deposition only has taken place with synthetic fibres. The capacitive behaviour of the PPy coated textiles were evaluated using cyclic voltammetry, impedance spectroscopy and charge–discharge analysis. A unit cell was fabricated to investigate the capacitive behaviour by assembling two symmetric textile electrodes separated by a solid polymer (PVA/1M H2SO4 gel) electrolyte membrane. The textile electrodes prepared with PPy-Cotton and PPy-Viscose exhibited the highest specific capacitance value of 268Fg−1 and 244Fg−1, respectively at a scan rate of 5mVs−1. The charge–discharge analysis also shows higher specific capacitance value for PPy-Viscose and PPy-Cotton. The focus of this research is to highlight a successful, simple and reproducible method for fabrication of the textile based supercapacitor and the chemistry of surface interaction of PPy molecule with natural and synthetic fabrics.