Supercapacitors based on arrays of nanostructured conducting polymer

ANYL 16

Ran Liu, ranliu@umd.edu, Seungil Cho, chosi1@gmail.com, Rui Xiao, xiaorui9703@hotmail.com, and Sang Bok Lee, slee@umd.edu. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, 0107 Chemistry Building, College Park, MD 20742
In this paper, we introduce a prototype of high-powered supercapacitors composed of PEDOT [Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)] nanotubes arrays, where the large internal specific area and the thin wall of tubular structure could advance a fast and efficient electrochemistry that greatly affects the specific capacitance/specific energy density, power density values of the supercapacitors. In order to study the structure effects on the supercapacitors properties, various PEDOT nanostructures were fabricated by electropolymerization of different concentrations of EDOT monomers at different potentials on shape-differentiated nanoelectrodes in the porous alumina template. The mass of PEDOT was controlled by fixing the charge passed for the electropolymerization. TEM and SEM were used to characterize the PEDOT structure and morphology. Cyclic voltammetry, galvanostatic charge-discharge and impedance spectroscopy were utilized to study the supercapacitors electrochemical properties, where we found they are greatly affected by the nanostructures of the PEDOT.