Highly flexible reduced graphene oxide@polypyrrole-polyethylene glycol foam for supercapacitors

Chaoyue Cai; Jialong Fu; Chengyan Zhang; Cheng Wang; Rui Sun; Shufang Guo; Fan Zhang; Mingyan Wang; Yuqing Liu; Jun Chen

doi:10.1039/d0ra05199c

Highly flexible reduced graphene oxide@polypyrrole-polyethylene glycol foam for supercapacitors

RSC Adv. 2020 Aug 6;10(49):29090-29099. doi: 10.1039/d0ra05199c. eCollection 2020 Aug 5.

Authors

Chaoyue Cai^{1

2}, Jialong Fu^{1

2}, Chengyan Zhang^{1

2}, Cheng Wang², Rui Sun², Shufang Guo^{1

2}, Fan Zhang^{1

2}, Mingyan Wang^{1

2}, Yuqing Liu^{3

4}, Jun Chen⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, Jiangsu Ocean University Lianyungang 222005 China mingyanlyg@hotmail.com.
² Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Marine Biotechnology, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Marine Bioresources and Environment, Co-Innovation Center of Jiangsu Marine Bio-industry Technology, Jiangsu Ocean University Lianyungang 222005 China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Film and Integrated Devices, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China Chengdu 610054 PR China.
⁴ Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, Australian Institute for Innovative Materials, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong Squires Way North Wollongong NSW2519 Australia junc@uow.edu.au.

Abstract

A flexible and free-standing 3D reduced graphene oxide@polypyrrole-polyethylene glycol (RGO@PPy-PEG) foam was developed for wearable supercapacitors. The device was fabricated sequentially, beginning with the electrodeposition of PPy in the presence of a PEG-borate on a sacrificial Ni foam template, followed by a subsequent GO wrapping and chemical reduction process. The 3D RGO@PPy-PEG foam electrode showed excellent electrochemical properties with a large specific capacitance of 415 F g^-1 and excellent long-term stability (96% capacitance retention after 8000 charge-discharge cycles) in a three electrode configuration. An assembled (two-electrode configuration) symmetric supercapacitor using RGO@PPy-PEG electrodes exhibited a remarkable specific capacitance of 1019 mF cm^-2 at 2 mV s^-1 and 95% capacitance retention over 4000 cycles. The device exhibits extraordinary mechanical flexibility and showed negligable capacitance loss during or after 1000 bending cycles, highlighting its great potential in wearable energy devices.