Designing Hierarchically Nanostructured Conductive Polymer Gels for Electrochemical Energy Storage and Conversions

Nanostructured conductive polymers have been widely researched for various applications such as energy storage and conversion, chemical/biological sensors, and biomedical devices. Recently, novel synthetic methods which adopt doping molecules as cross-linker have been developed to prepare conductive polymer gels (CPGs) with cross-linked network and 3D hierarchically porous nanostructures. The CPGs, as well as their derived carbon frameworks, exhibit high electrical conductivity, large surface area, structural tunability, and hierarchical porosity for rapid mass/charge transport, which contribute to their high performance when applied for energy storage and conversion devices. This Perspective highlights the key features of CPGs and their derived carbon frameworks, discusses their possibilities in terms of rational synthesis and energy related applications, and proposes future directions for their technological development.