Polyaniline-Containing Composites Based on High-Porous Carbon Cloth for Flexible Supercapacitor Electrodes
Composites based on commercially available carbon cloth Busofit T-040 and conductive polymer polyaniline have been fabricated using electrochemical polymerization of aniline on the surface of carbon cloth fibers. The composite forming process and the technique of the carbon cloth surface modification by electrochemical etching have been optimized. Supercapacitive performance of composites for flexible supercapacitor electrodes application has been also studied. The introduction of polyaniline in composites is found to demonstrate the capacitance about 2-2.5 times higher than that for pure carbon cloth because of pseudocapacity. At the same time, they maintain high conductivity and efficiency. The specific capacitance of etched carbon cloth based composite is 267 F/g (8.9 F/cm2, per unit of geometrical area of the electrode) at 97-99% charge efficiency. The specific capacity of that composite defined by BET is 548 m2/g.