Title of the paper: Composite supercapacitor electrodes made of activated carbon/PEDOT:PSS and activated carbon/doped  PEDOT

Authors:Sonia T. S, Mini P. A, Nandhini R, Sujith Kalluri, Avinash Balakrishnan, S. V. Nair and K. R. V. Subramanian

University/Institute:Amrita Centre for Nanosciences and Molecular Medicine, Ponekkara P. O., Kochi 682041, Kerala, India

Abstracts:In this letter, we report on the high electrical storage capacity of composite electrodes made from nanoscale activated carbon combined with either PEDOT:PSS (Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)- poly(styrenesulfonate)  or PEDOT doped with multiple dopants such as APS (ammonium persulfate) and DMSO (di-methyl sulfoxide).   The composites were fabricated by electropolymerization of the conducting polymers (PEDOT:PSS, doped PEDOT) onto the nanoscale activated carbon backbone, wherein the nanoscale activated carbon was produced by ball-milling followed by chemical and thermal treatments. Activated carbon/PEDOT:PSS yielded capacitance values of 640 F g-1 and 26 mF cm -2, while activated carbon/doped PEDOT yielded capacitances of 1183 Fg-1 and 42 mFcm-2 at 10 mVs-1. This is more than five times the storage capacity previously reported for activated carbon-PEDOT composites.  Further, the use of multiple dopants in PEDOT improved the storage performance of the composite electrode well over that of PEDOT:PSS.  The composite electrodes were characterized for their electrochemical behaviour, structural and morphological details and electronic conductivity and show promise as high-performance energy storage systems.

Links to the paper (link to the journal webpage): http://www.ias.ac.in/matersci/forthcoming/Jun13/BOMS-D-12-00016.pdf