Electrochemical codeposition of graphene/polypyrrole composites on carbon paper for electrochemical capacitors

• We optimize the size distribution of graphene oxide/pyrrole micelles as single-mode.
• The stability of micelles is still good at elevated ion strength.
• The uniform micelles is benefit for comigration and codeposition.
• The channels for ion migration in electrode are retained at high mass loading.
• The composite electrode show high areal capacitance.

A simple electrochemical codeposition technique has been introduced to fabricate graphene oxide/polypyrrole (GO/PPy) composites. To increase the adsorption of colloidal GOs at the liquid–liquid interface, the organic supporting electrolyte like benzenesulfonate sodium (BS) is added in GO/pyrrole micelle solution, which does not induce the flocculation sedimentation of GO at elevated ionic strength. The narrow size distribution of GO/pyrrole/BS micelles is benefit for uniform codeposition of GO/PPy on the carbon fiber surface. Moreover, the GO nanosheets and benzensulfonate have been incorporated into composites as mixture dopants, which increased the growth orientation of PPy in electropolymerization process and result in more loose structure for ionic transportation. The composites electrodes exhibit high specific capacitance, good cyclic stability after electrochemical reduction of graphene oxide (RGO). The specific capacitance of composite electrode with low mass density still reaches 358 F/g at scan rate of 10 mV/s within an electrochemical windows of 1.0 V. The strong interaction effect between two components resists the mechanical deformation effect and exhibits only 7.1% decay at a charge/discharge current of 3 A/g after 1000 cycles. At increasing the mass density of composites to 8.4 mg/cm2, the areal capacitance of electrode almost grow linearly to 1.286 F/cm2, which is more than triple that of BS-doped PPy with the same mass density. The high capacity of the composite electrode exerts the potential applications in capacitive deionization, microbial fuel cell or even capacitive energy storage.

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