A general approach toward enhancement of pseudocapacitive performance of conducting polymers by redox-active electrolytes

A general approach is demonstrated where the pseudocapacitive performance of different conducting polymers is enhanced in redox-active electrolytes. The concept is demonstrated using several electroactive conducting polymers, including polyaniline, polypyrrole, and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene). As compared to conventional electrolytes, the redox-active electrolytes, prepared by simply adding a redox mediator to the conventional electrolyte, can significantly improve the energy storage capacity of pseudocapacitors with different conducting polymers. The results show that the specific capacitance of conducting polymer based pseudocapacitors can be increased by a factor of two by utilization of the redox-active electrolytes. In fact, this approach gives some of the highest reported specific capacitance values for electroactive conducting polymers. Moreover, our findings present a general and effective approach for the enhancement of energy storage performance of pseudocapacitors using a variety of polymeric electrode materials. •A general approach toward enhancement of conducting polymer pseudocapacitance by redox-active electrolytes is presented.•The capacitance of the conducting polymer pseudocapacitors increase significantly by the redox-active electrolytes.•The ionic conductivity of the redox-active electrolytes improved remarkably.