Conducting polyaniline (PANI) with high conductivity, ease of synthesis, high flexibility, low cost, environmental friendliness and unique redox properties has been extensively applied in electrochemical energy storage and conversion technologies including supercapacitors, rechargeable batteries and fuel cells. Pure PANI exhibits inferior stability as supercapacitive electrode, and can not meet the ever-increasing demand for more stable molecular structure, higher power/energy density and more N-active sites. The combination of PANI and other active materials like carbon materials, metal compounds and other conducting polymers (CPs) can make up for these disadvantages as supercapacitive electrode. As for rechargeable batteries and fuel cells, recent research related to PANI mainly focus on PANI modified composite electrodes and supported composite electrocatalysts respectively. In various PANI based composite structures, PANI usually acts as a conductive layer and network, and the resultant PANI based composites with various unique structures have demonstrated superior electrochemical performance in supercapacitors, rechargeable batteries and fuel cells due to the synergistic effect. Additionally, PANI derived N-doped carbon materials also have been widely used as metal-free electrocatalysts for fuel cells, which is also involved in this review. In the end, we give a brief outline of future advances and research directions on PANI.

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Rechargeable aqueous zinc-ion batteries (ZIBs) are considered as potential secondary battery technology for grid-scale energy storage system due to their reliable safety and low cost. However, limited cathode materials with superior rate capability and cyclic performance is still the main bottleneck restricting its further development. Herein, a hierarchical honeycomb-like Mn3O4@MnO2 core-shell architecture is proposed as the robust cathode material for ZIBs for the first time. The electrochemically active MnO2 and the honeycomb-like nanocomposite particles are beneficial to fast ion transport and storage, moreover, the encapsulated MnO2 shell can function as the buffer to suppress the volume expansion of the active material, ultimately enhancing the reaction kinetics and electrochemical performance of the Mn3O4@MnO2. Significantly, the Mn3O4@MnO2 nanocomposite delivers a high discharge capacity of 165 mAh g-1 at a high current density of 2 A g-1, which is almost two times as high as the pure Mn3O4 (87 mAh g-1). The capacity retention (76.3% after 600 cycles at 1A g-1) is also superior to the Mn3O4 cathode (48.7%). Furthermore, the Zn//Mn3O4@MnO2 battery possesses a 1.83V-high open-circuit voltage. These ideal results suggest that the hierarchical honeycomb-like Mn3O4@MnO2 core-shell composite is a promising cathode material for high-performance aqueous ZIBs.

The preparation of underwater acoustically transparent polyurethane with excellent acoustic transparency, hydrophobicity, and electrical insulation is the current bottleneck prior in the underwater acoustic system. In this work, we synthesized a series of acoustically transparent polybutadiene-based polyurethane (FPU) modified with a,ω-dihydroxypoly [(3,3,3-trifluoropropyl)methylsi-