Graphene-Enabled Improved Supercapacitor Performance of Polyaniline Nanofiber Composites

Abstract

Graphene/PANI nanofiber composites were synthesized by in-situ chemical oxidative polymerization of aniline in the presence of graphene oxide (GO) followed by chemical reduction of GO.The assynthesized composite was carefully characterized by the combination of the microscopy and spectroscopy techniques.The supercapacitor performance of graphene/PANI nanofiber composite was further investigated.As expected, the synergistic interactions between graphene and PANI enable the as-fabricated electrode with greatly improved electrochemical performance.The specific capacitance of graphene/PANI was calculated to be 952 F/g at 1 A/g, much higher than those of graphene (236 F/g) and PANI (621 F/g) counterparts.The specific capacitance maintains 645 F/g at 10 A/g with 68% retention of original capacitance after a 10-fold increase in the current density.Moreover, the graphene/PANI electrode remains 88% retention of initial capacitance over 1000 cycles, while PANI only gives 73% of original capacitance.These data clearly suggest that large capacitance, high rate capability, and good cycling stability can be synchronously achieved by doping PANI nanofibers with graphene sheets.