Preparation and characterization of PANI-PPY/PET fabric conductive composite for supercapacitors

The conductive polyester (PET) fabric is prepared by in-situ polymerization of aniline and pyrrole. It has been found that copolymers with different monomer molar ratios will exhibit different morphologies on the surface of the fabric. In addition, when the monomer ratio of aniline (An) and pyrrole (Py) is 0.75:0.25, the conductivity and electrochemical properties of the fabric reaches the best. Under such circumstance, the electrode fabric has an active material loading of 8.5 mg/cm2, an electrical conductivity of 1.44 × 10−2 S/cm, and areal specific capacitance of the fabric electrode achieves 1046 mF/cm2 at a current density of 2 mA/cm2. The volumetric energy density of supercapacitor fabricated by this electrode reaches 0.043 mWh/cm3 at a power density of 0.005 W/cm3. Finally, the supercapacitor demonstrates excellent flexibility during the bending test, and posses a capacitance retention of 54.2% after 1000 cycles.