Facile and scalable preparation of highly porous polyvinyl chloride-multi walled carbon nanotubes-polyaniline composite film for solid-state flexible supercapacitor

Flexible and lightweight PVC-MWCNTs-PANI nanocomposite film with highly porous 3D network structure and good capacitive behavior was easily fabricated via uniform adding of Azodicarbonamide (ADC) as a foaming agent into structure of Polyvinyl chloride-Multi walled carbon nanotubes-Polyaniline composite. ADC in the composite film can be decomposed to various volatile gases under a controlled temperature, resulting in the formation of porous structure for the PVC-MWCNTs-PANI film with high surface area. The flexible porous PVC-MWCNTs-PANI film showed much higher specific capacitance value of 837 mF cm(-2) with 89% retention after 2000 cycles at a current density of 2.4 mA cm(-2) compared to the flexible non-porous PVC-MWCNTs-PANI film prepared without the foaming process (153 mF cm(-2) with 90% retention). Furthermore, the porous PVC-MWCNTs-PANI film could possess energy density of 74.4 mu Wh cm(-2)(31 Wh kg(-1)) and power density of 0.96 mW cm(-2)(400 W kg(-1)). A flexible symmetric supercapacitor device made from two flexible porous PVC-MWCNTs-PANI films with the solid-state PVA/H2SO4 electrolyte exhibited high electrochemical performance. The enhanced supercapacitive performance of the obtained flexible device is due to the synergistic effect of PANI with MWCNTs, the porous 3D network structure and high wettability of the flexible films.