Preparation of porous nanorod polyaniline film and its high electrochemical capacitance performance

Nano-sized polyaniline (PANI) films were electrochemically deposited onto an ITO substrate by a pulse galvanostatic method (PGM) in an aqueous solution. The morphology of the as-prepared PANI film was characterized using a field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM). It was observed that the as-prepared PANI films were highly porous, and showed a nano-sized rod-like or coralline-like morphology depending on the charge loading performed in the electropolymerization process. Furthermore, the PANI films were electrochemically measured by the galvanostatic charge–discharge (GCD), cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) tests in 1 mol L−1 HClO4 solution. The results showed that such PANI films had a favorable electrochemical activity and an excellent capacitance. The rod-like PANI film prepared with the charge loading of 1000 mC showed the highest discharge capacitance of 569.1 F g−1 at a low current density of 1 A g−1. The discharge capacitance retained 97.7% after 1000 cycles at a large current density of 10 A g−1.