Synthesis at the interface between vapor and liquid is harnessed in the production of hierarchical architectures of conducting polymer nanostructures that afford freestanding films for storing electrochemical energy in pseudocapacitive devices. These conjugated polymeric nanomaterials possess highly reversible doping/dedoping cycles, multiple accessible oxidation states, fast redox kinetics, and excellent stability in both organic and aqueous electrolytes. Typically, conducting polymer pseudocapacitors are hybridized with capacitive carbon allotropes such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, and derivatives thereof, in order to enhance the amount of charge that can be stored per unit area, volume, or weight. Polymerization at the vapor/liquid interface is a powerful technique that affords conducting polymers of high purity possessing a long conjugation length for fabricating efficient electrochemical polymer cells. In our symmetric device configuration, both cathode and anode are designed with a high packing nanofibrillar density, comprised solely of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) one-dimensional brush-like nanostructures of high aspect ratio, and characterized by high conductivity (130 S/cm). This interfacial approach is a direct route to stable devices that exhibit high capacitance (175 F/g), possess excellent rate capability, and retain 94% of their original capacitance after 10,000 charge/discharge cycles.

Plastic nano-brushes for state-of-the-art nanofibrillar poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) pseudocapacitors

248th National Meeting (2014)

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