Development and Characterization of Novel Hybrid Materials Formed from ZnO-SiO2-Modified and Polyaniline for Organic Dyes Adsorption and Electrochemical Supercapacitor Applications

Abstract

Polyaniline (PANI) coated ZnO-SiO2 based hybrid material was prepared successfully by in-situ polymerization method and the product was analyzed by XPS, XRD, TEM, UV-vis, TGA, FTIR and BET techniques. According to these characterization results, ZnO were successfully incorporated with SiO2 and PANI matrix was also supported on ZnO–SiO2. The optical band gap was calculated from the Tauc’s plot it has been found 2.89 eV. The development of a PANI@ZnO–SiO2 is a new way to achieve better adsorption efficacy for Congo Red (CR) and Methylene Blue (MB) dyes in aqueous solutions due to the engineered excellent porous structure, which was 83.82 and 71.19 mg.g− 1, respectively. Moreover, this work reports also an extensive study of the effect of the SiO2 on the electrochemical performance of hybrid material based on ZnO and PANI employing cyclic voltammetry. It was found that the perfect stability, which can be sustained during a longtime of the galvanostatic charge-discharge (GCD) operation. The results reveal a superior cycling stability, with 90.1% capacitance retention after 1500 cycles.