Polyaniline Nanotubes- Reduced Graphene Oxide Composite for High Performance Supercapacitor

Supercapacitors (SCs), as high power density energy storage resources, have recently attracted considerable attention1, 2. Among the vast majority of supercapacitive materials, polyaniline (PANI) with different morphologies2 has been considered as one of the active materials due to its intrinsic high redox active-specific capacitance and flexibility3, 4. In this work, we report a supercapacitor fabricated from PANI rectangular nanotubes that was chemically synthesized by a simple and convenient method. This special shaped PANI composited with graphene oxide prepared with the Hummer method, and then GOES reduced to RGO to compose PANI-RGO composite. The obtained composite was drop-casted on a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) as a current collector. The structural analysis and morphological investigations revealed the formation of PANI rectangular tubes. PANI/RGO supercapacitor possesses a specific capacitance of 855 F/g at 1 A/g current density. The rate capability of the electrode tested at different current densities from 1 to 20 A/g shows an good specific capacitance of 586 F/g at a current density of 20 A/g. The capacitance retention over the long-term galvanostatic charge/discharge (CD) cycles was evaluated and the electrode was found to retain 81% of its capacitance even after 5000 cycles.