Improving the electrochemical performance of polyaniline electrode for supercapacitor by chemical oxidative copolymerization with p-phenylenediamine

A series of poly(aniline-co-p-phenylenediamine) (P(ANI-co-PPDA)) copolymers were synthesized via the chemical oxidative polymerization of aniline with p-phenylenediamine (PPDA) as the comonomer. The structure and morphology of the P(ANI-co-PPDA) copolymers prepared with different feeding ratio of PPDA under different polymerizing temperature were compared with the two homopolymers polyaniline (PANI) and poly(p-phenylenediamine) (PPPDA). It is interesting to find that the electrical conductivity, specific capacitance and cycling stability of the P(ANI-co-PPDA) copolymer electrode materials were obviously improved with certain feeding ratio of PPDA, compared with those two homopolymers.