Physico electrochemical analyses of oxidatively polymerized polyaniline polypyrrole and poly aniline co thiophene for pseudo capacitor application

Abstract

In the thirst of exploring new ways to compactly and flexibly store electrical energy in a device that could charge and discharge easily, and rapidly with high power delivery, conducting polymers are the most soughtafter material in the field of organic electronics which serves the purpose. In recent times, apart from the basic and#960;-conjugated conducting polymers, the development of their derivatives and hybrids with carbon, carbon-based materials like graphene, fullerene and hybrids with metal oxides like RuO2, V2O5, MnO2 and some more oxides paved way for achieving good stability, high energy density and prolonged durability. Yet, engineering the microstructures of basic conducting polymers, could achieve a more ordered and even grain size distribution that helps arrange conducting polymers uniformly, which in-turn could lead to uniform charge distribution, smooth transfer of electric charges and hence an improvement in conductivity is forecasted, thereby improving the efficacy and efficiency of the end-use application. As the conducting polymers possesses better power density than batteries and better energy density than capacitors, it finds numerous applications like development of sensors, high dense memory storage application, spintronic devices, energy storage devices like pseudo-capacitors etc. Based on these qualities, the synthesis and developments of three basic conducting polymers, polyaniline, polypyrrole and polythiophene and a copolymer, poly(aniline-co-thiophene) for energy storage applications are studied. This dissertation precisely reports on the ways of synthesis, physical and electrochemical characterization results of these conducting polymers whose feasibility to develop as a better pseudo-capacitor are analyzed and reported. These polymers are engineered as micro/nano-structures with and without the usage of templates whose differences between the traditional methods of syntheses are thoroughly studied and reported. Their mechanisms of conjugation, conduction, oxidation state and charge storage are detailed with the help of models for each material studied newline