Facile synthesis of sandwich-like polyaniline/boron-doped graphene nano hybrid for supercapacitors

• Published in: Carbon (New York) 2015-01, Vol.81, p.552-563
• Main Authors: Hao, Qingli, Xia, Xifeng, Lei, Wu, Wang, Wenjuan, Qiu, Jieshan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Capacitance; Capacitors; Carbon; Conduction; Cross-disciplinary physics: materials science; rheology; Electrical, magnetic and optical properties; Electrolytes; Exact sciences and technology; Fullerenes and related materials; diamonds, graphite; Graphene; Materials science; Organic polymers; Physicochemistry of polymers; Physics; Polyanilines; Properties and characterization; Specific materials; Supercapacitors
• ISSN: 0008-6223; 1873-3891
• DOI: 10.1016/j.carbon.2014.09.090

The physicochemical property of chemically prepared graphene can be significantly changed due to the incorporating of heteroatoms into graphene. In this article, boron-doped graphene sheets are used as carbon substrates instead of graphene for loading polyaniline by in situ polymerization. Compared with the individual component and polyaniline/non-doped graphene, the sandwich-like polyaniline/boron-doped graphene exhibits remarkably enhanced electrochemical specific capacitance in both acid and alkaline electrolytes. In a three-electrode configuration, the hybrid has a specific capacitance about 406Fg−1 in 1M H2SO4 and 318Fg−1 in 6M KOH at 1mVs−1. In the two-electrode system of a symmetric supercapacitor, this hybrid achieves a specific capacitance about 241 and 189Fg−1 at 0.5Ag−1 with a specific energy density around 19.9 and 30.1Whkg−1, in the acid and alkaline electrolytes, respectively. The as-obtained polyaniline/boron-doped graphene hybrid shows good rate performance. Notably, the obtained electrode materials exhibit long cycle stability in both acid and alkaline electrolytes (∼100% and 83% after 5000 cycles, respectively). The improved electrochemical performance of the hybrid is mainly attributed to the introduction of additional p-type carriers in carbon systems by boron-doping and the well combination of pseudocapacitive conducting polyaniline.