Increasing power demands associated with mobile electronic devices, transportation and renewable energy generation systems requires new energy storage technologies with higher specific capacitance, faster charge discharge rates and long term cycle stability. Supercapacitors offer an alternative to conventional power sources (batteries and capacitors) with the potential to deliver energy with a combination of high power and high energy density. Of the many different materials that can be used for supercapacitor electrodes, ranging from high surface area carbon nanomaterials to Faradaic metal oxides, electrochemically conducting polymers (ECPs) have emerged as a low cost alternative with tremendous synthetic and structural versatility.The focus of our research is to utilize various processing and synthesis methods to increase the performance of ECP electrodes by controlling ion-transport and electron transfer processes. First, we show how to synthesize conducting polymer (CP) microtubes with tunable dimensions (length, diameter) using stainless steel mesh substrates with varying wire diameters and spacing. Structure-property relationships were developed to correlate the synthesis conditions with electrochemical performance in energy storage devices. Second, we investigated the use of polymer dopants to directly affect key performance metrics. For example, we integrated poly(4-styrene sulfonic acid), a known proton conductor, to increase the ion transport within the polymer structures. We also investigated the use of lignin, a non-conductive polymer with moderate redox activity, to improve the redox capacitance of the conducting polymer film. Through this work, we demonstrate how electrode composition and morphology influence key metrics of polymer electrodes to design new materials for high-energy supercapacitors.

Conducting polymer microstructures and composites for supercapacitor electrodes

248th National Meeting (2014)

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