High performance solid-state flexible supercapacitor based on Fe3O4/carbon nanotube/polyaniline ternary films

Abstract

A novel flexible nanoarchitecture was fabricated via the facile electropolymerization of a polyaniline (PANI) network on Fe₃O₄ particles grown axially on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) of a CNT film for supercapacitor electrode applications. The PANI chains serve as a protective shell to improve the structural stability of the Fe₃O₄ particles. The resulting supercapacitor exhibits a high specific energy density of 28.0 W h kg⁻¹, high specific power density of 5.3 kW kg⁻¹ and specific capacitance of 201 F g⁻¹ at a scan rate of 20 mV s⁻¹, surpassing the performances observed for many recently reported flexible supercapacitors. Furthermore, the CNT film-Fe₃O₄-PANI supercapacitor demonstrates excellent cyclic stability with only a 3.6% loss of its initial specific capacitance after 10 000 charge–discharge cycles. These results suggest that the CNT film-Fe₃O₄-PANI composite is very promising for next generation high-performance supercapacitors.