Effect of Protonation Doping of Polyaniline Electrodes using Hydrochloric Acid on Its Pseudocapacitor Capacitance

Abstract

Pseudocapacitor is a supercapacitor that can store charge faradically through a reversible redox reaction. Polyaniline (PANi) is one of the promising active materials for pseudocapacitor electrodes since it can produce theoretical specific capacitance up to 750 F/g. We prepared leucomeraldine base polyaniline (LB-PANi) electrodes by deposition of dissolved LB-PANi powder in N,N-Dimethylformamide (DMF) using spraycoating technique. The LB-PANi electrodes was then doped with 1 M HCl through protonation process to obtain emeraldine salt polyaniline (ES-PANi) electrodes. We used both electrode materials and 1 M KCl to prepare a symmetrical sandwich supercapacitor model of <LB-PANi|KCl|LB-PANi> and <ES-PANi|KCl|ES-PANi>, as well as measured their performance. The results show a significant increase of the specific capacitance of PANi supercapacitor from 15.02 F/kg to 1876.87 F/kg when the electrodes of the LB-PANi were changed with the ES-PANi electrodes.