Role of Polymers in Enhancing the Performance of Electrochemical Supercapacitors: A Review

Abstract

In this modern era, there is an increasing significance in the usage of supercapacitor devices in power applications due to their outstanding power density, ultrafast charging/discharging capability, and prolonged cycling ability. Extensive efforts are being made to improve their capacitive performance by engineering high‐performing polymeric materials as electrode and electrolyte materials. Predominantly, the employment of conducting polymer (CP)‐based composite materials as electrode materials has led to practical and theoretical benefits such as the outstanding surface area that facilitates quick access of dispersed electrolyte ions. The insertion of carbon materials such as graphene, carbon nanotubes, and porous carbon within the CPs matrix has an imperative role in refining the overall system‘s specific capacitance. The electrodes′ specific capacitance proficiency and cycling constancy are improved synergistically by integrating both materials for efficient energy‐storage applications. This Minireview encompasses the storage mechanism in different gel polymer‐based electrolytes and their role in enhancing the pseudocapacitance of redox‐active materials for supercapacitor applications. Further, the Minireview focuses on the influence of conducting polymers in promoting the device performance with a view on the synthesis methodology and pseudocapacitive nature. The different types of supercapacitors designed with polymer gel electrolyte, solid polymer electrolyte, and biodegradable polymer‐based electrolytes for improved supercapacitive performance are critically reviewed.

Designing cross‐linked pyrrole‐thieno [3,4‐ b ] thiophene copolymer to push forward electrochemical performance and access flexible micro‐supercapacitor with ultra‐long cycling stability

“…Among them, polypyrrole (PPy) has a higher electrical conductivity than other polymers due to its narrow band gap, and has been shown to be compounded with other materials to form high-performance hybrids . [14][15][16][17] As a result, pyrrole hybrid compounds are also widely and intensively studied and they have become a hot research area with good applications in many applications such as supercapacitors, [18][19][20][21][22] lithium-ion batteries, [23][24][25] electrochromic devices, [26][27][28][29] functionalized electrodes, [30][31][32] and optoelectronic devices. [33][34][35] The advantages of easy processing and plasticity, excellent mechanical flexibility [36][37][38] together with variable conductivity 39,40 make organic semiconductor polymers a functional material with excellent properties in the development of electronic, optical, and optoelectronic conversion devices and other fields.…”

Polymer Composites with Quantum Dots as Potential Electrode Materials for Supercapacitors Application: A Review

“…In recent studies, utilization of polymers, especially conductive polymers have attracted much attention. Along with delivering excellent specific energy, they have exhibited optimum pseudocapacitive nature which resulted in faster redox reaction and hence superior electrochemical activity [14,15]. Researchers have utilized conductive polymers of different sizes or dimensions and different morphologies (nanoparticles, nanosheets, nanofibers) in energy storage and conversion applications [16].…”

Investigation of polycarbazoles thin films prepared by electrochemical oxidation of 3- and 9-substituted carbazoles

“…Electrochemical oxidation and chemical oxidation of a heterocyclic monomer are the two main methods of synthesizing a CP although other methods such as enzymatic catalyzed polymerization [7], vapor phase polymerization [8] and photochemical polymerization [9] are also sometimes used. Due to their numerous advantages such as their high and tunable electrical conductivity, mechanical flexibility, lightness, low-cost and ease to be synthesized, functionalized, nanostructured, or associated with other compounds to prepare composites, CPs have been used for many applications such as: energy storage in supercapacitors [10,11] and batteries [12,13], corrosion inhibition [14,15], gas sensing [16,17] and biosensing [18,19], optoelectronics [20,21], and biomedicine [22,23].…”