Biodegradable polymer-modified graphene/polyaniline electrodes for supercapacitors

- Chitosan modified graphene and polyaniline hybrid supercapacitor is proposed.
- Chitosan prevents graphene restacking and helps forming more nucleation sites for aniline.
- Electrochemical performances are improved for chitosan modified electrode.
- PANI anchoring can offer rich redox faradaic reactions.
- Specific capacitance is 340 F/g at 1 A/g, and high cyclic stability of 74% after 1000 cycles is achieved.

A promising supercapacitor material based on chitosan-modified graphene/polyaniline (CS-G/PANI) composite has been successfully synthesized by in situ polymerization. In this work, we established an environmentally friendly approach to the synthesis of well-dispersed graphene based on the biodegradable polymer chitosan (CS) using graphene oxide (GO) as a precursor. The merit of this approach is that CS acts as a stabilizing agent for GO after reduction. The resulting material was shown to exhibit good dispersion in water, and hence, this CS-G facilitates the adsorption of aniline monomers by increasing the exposure of aniline nuclei growth sites. Under the same polyaniline (PANI) concentration, chitosan modified graphene/PANI (CS-G/PANI) nanocomposites showed higher PANI adsorption than graphene/PANI (G/PANI). The CS-G/PANI nanocomposite achieved a greater which is the highest value reported to date for starch-modified graphene subjected to in situ polymerization. The modified CS-G/PANI electrode shows a potential alternative path to achieve high capacitance by preventing graphene aggregation in a simple and cost effective method, which consequently leads to a new avenue for fabricating excellent electrochemical devices.