Spontaneous assembly of strong and conductive graphene/polypyrrole hybrid aerogels for energy storage

Abstract

Spontaneous assembly of nanoscale building blocks into three-dimensional (3D) frameworks is a vital strategy for practical application in environmental remediation, energy storage/conversion, sensing devices, etc. Herein we report an environmentally friendly, low cost, and easy to scale-up route to synthesize reduced graphene oxide (rGO)-polypyrrole (PPy) hybrid aerogels by applying this novel spontaneous assembly method for the first time. The strong interaction between rGO and PPy, the reaction mechanism, the doping(/conducting) behaviour and the electrochemical energy storage of the resulting hybrid aerogels have been fully characterized by FTIR, Raman, TG, XRD, SEM, TEM, nitrogen sorption tests, CV, EIS, etc. The results show that for the resulting hybrid aerogels, the existence of PPy can significantly enhance the electrochemical capacitance of the rGO aerogels, while the existence of the rGO sheets can greatly enhance the mechanical properties of the PPy assemblies.