Comparative study on polyvinyl chloride film as flexible substrate for preparing free-standing polyaniline-based composite electrodes for supercapacitors

The free-standing polyaniline (PANI)-based composite film electrodes were prepared with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and the aniline modified PVC (PVC-An) films as flexible substrates for supercapacitors, via facile in-situ chemical oxidative polymerization of aniline, with conventional chemical oxidative polymerization or rapid-mixing chemical oxidative polymerization technique. Owing to the grafting of PANI from the PVC An film as substrate and the suppression of the secondary growth of the primary PANI particles in the rapid-mixing chemical oxidative polymerization, the PVC-g-PANI-2 composite film with loose surface possessed better comprehensive performance, accompanying the high specific capacitance (645.3 Fig at a current density of 1 A/g), good rate capacitance (retaining 63.2% of original value at a current density of 10 A/g and 52.0% at a scan rate of 100 mV/s), good cycle stability (retaining 83.1% after 1000 cycles) and the improved internal resistance. Besides its excellent flexibility, it could retain 61.2% of its original specific capacitance under the stress of 8.66 MPa for 1 h, demonstrating a good tensile-resistance. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.