Pulse electrochemical synthesis of polypyrrole/graphene oxide@graphene aerogel for high-performance supercapacitor

Erhui Zhang; Weifeng Liu; Xuguang Liu; Zongbin Zhao; Yongzhen Yang

doi:10.1039/d0ra01181a

Pulse electrochemical synthesis of polypyrrole/graphene oxide@graphene aerogel for high-performance supercapacitor

RSC Adv. 2020 Mar 24;10(20):11966-11970. doi: 10.1039/d0ra01181a. eCollection 2020 Mar 19.

Authors

Erhui Zhang^{1

2}, Weifeng Liu^{1

3}, Xuguang Liu^{1

3}, Zongbin Zhao⁴, Yongzhen Yang¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Lab of Interface Science and Engineering in Advanced Materials (Taiyuan University of Technology), Ministry of Education Taiyuan 030024 China [email protected] [email protected].
² College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology Taiyuan 030024 China.
³ Institute of New Carbon Materials, Taiyuan University of Technology Taiyuan 030024 China.
⁴ Carbon Research Laboratory, Liaoning Key Lab for Energy Materials and Chemical Engineering, State Key Lab of Fine Chemicals, School of Chemical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology Dalian 116023 China.

Abstract

A novel electroactive polypyrrole/graphene oxide@graphene aerogel (PGO@GA) was synthesized for the first time by pulse electropolymerization. The off-time in this technique allows polypyrrole (PPy) to go through a more stable structural arrangement, meanwhile its electronic transmission performance is enhanced by immobilizing graphene oxide between PPy chains. Moreover, graphene aerogel provides a three-dimensional structure with high conductivity to protect PPy from swelling and shrinking during the capacitive testing. Under these synergistic effects, PGO@GA presents exceptional capacitive performances including high specific capacitance (625 F g^-1 at 1 A g^-1), excellent rate capability (keeping 478 F g^-1 at 15 A g^-1 with retention rate of 76.5%), and excellent cycling life (retaining 85.7% of its initial value when cycling 5000 times at 10 A g^-1). Therefore, the strategy adopted by this research provides a good reference for preparing other PPy-based electrode materials applied in the fields of catalysis, sensing, adsorption and energy storage.