Polyfurfuryl alcohol spheres template synthesis of 3D porous graphene for high-performance supercapacitor application

• A new strategy for fabricating 3D reduced graphene oxide 3DrGO was proposed.
• 3DrGO with porous structure was obtained through hydrothermal method with polyfurfuryl alcohol (PFA) spheres as the template.
• 3DrGO/PANI nanowire composite was prepared by in situ dilute polymerization.
• 3DrGO/PANI exhibited high capacitance with good cycling stability.

In this work, a 3D porous graphene (3DrGO) was prepared by a hydrothermal assembly process of graphene oxide (GO) using polyfurfuryl alcohol (PFA) spheres as the template followed by thermal reduction. The introduction of PFA spheres can effectively enlarge the interspace between graphene sheets and suppresses their re-stacking in the thermal treatment. The 3DrGO was further composted with PANI nanowire. The structure and the property of 3DrGO and 3DrGO/PANI composite have been characterized by transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, cyclic voltammetry, galvanostatic charge–discharge test and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Electrochemical test reveals that the 3DrGO has good capacitance performance of 104 F/g at current charge-discharge current density of 1A/g and the capacitance performance increase to 530 F/g after further composed with PANI nanowire. Both 3DrGO and 3DrGO/PANI show excellent capacity retention rates of 95% and 88%, respectively, after 1000 cycles. All these impressive results demonstrate that the material obtained by this approach is greatly promising for application in high-performance supercapacitors.

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