Flexible Electrode Design: Fabrication of Freestanding Polyaniline-Based Composite Films for High-Performance Supercapacitors

Polyaniline (PANI) is a promising pseudocapacitance electrode material. However, its structural instability leads to low cyclic stability and limited rate capability which hinders its practical applications. In view of the limitations, flexible PANI-based composite films are developed to improve the electrochemical performance of electrode materials. We report in the research a facile and cost-effective approach for fabrication of a high-performance supercapacitor (SC) with excellent cyclic stability and tunable energy and power densities. SC electrode containing a very high mass loading of active materials is a flexible film of PANI, tissue wiper-based cellulose, graphite-based exfoliated graphite (ExG), and silver nanoparticles with potential applications in wearable electronics. The optimum preparation weight ratios of silver nitrate/aniline and ExG/aniline used in the research are estimated to be 0.18 and 0.65 (or higher), respectively. Our results show that an ultrahigh capacitance of 3.84 F/cm2 (240.10 F/g) at a discharge rate of 5 mA can be achieved. In addition, our study shows that the power density can be increased from 1531.3 to 3000 W/kg by selecting the weight ratio of ExG/aniline to be more than 0.65, with a sacrifice in the energy density. The obtained promising electrochemical properties are found to be mainly attributed to an effective combination of PANI, ExG, cushiony cellulose scaffold, and silver as well as the porosity of the composite.