Electrochemical supercapacitor with polymeric active electrolyte

Abstract

An electrochemical supercapacitor with a polymeric active electrolyte was designed and fabricated in this work. A water-soluble conducting polymer, sulfonated polyaniline (SPAni), was used in the supercapacitor as the active electrolyte and a semipermeable membrane was employed as the separator of the device. It was found that SPAni in the electrolyte can provide pseudocapacitance via its reversible electrochemical redox reaction. Owing to the good stability of SPAni, the supercapacitor has a long cycling life. Moreover, the migration of SPAni between the two electrodes was blocked by the semipermeable membrane separator, thus self-discharge caused by the shuttle effect of SPAni was suppressed. The research in this paper demonstrates the possibility of using a polymer as the active electrolyte in a supercapacitor and has paved a new way to achieve active electrolyte enhanced supercapacitors with high capacitance and good energy retention. © 2014 the Partner Organisations.