Polyaniline-Coated Electro-Etched Carbon Fiber Cloth Electrodes for Supercapacitors

Abstract

Carbon fiber clothes are a promising material for electrodes of supercapacitors owing to their unique 3-D structure, high surface area, remarkable chemical stability, and electrical conductivity. In this Article, electro-etched carbon fiber cloth is explored as an electrode for supercapacitors by coating polyaniline nanowires. The as-prepared electro-etched carbon fiber cloth and polyaniline nanowires, which were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy, were assembled into supercapacitors. The polyaniline nanowires can reach a mass-normalized specific capacitance of 673 F/g and an area-normalized specific capacitance of 3.5 F/cm2. We also studied the etching and coating of single carbon fibers using the same processing method. The single fiber shows almost the same specific capacitance as the carbon fiber cloth of the same coating density, indicating good accessibility of etched carbon fiber cloth electrode. This work suggests that our polyaniline-based etched carbon fiber cloth electrodes can be a low-cost and scalable solution for the high-performance energy storage devices.