High performance solid-state flexible supercapacitor based on Fe3O4/carbon nanotube/polyaniline ternary films

A novel flexible nanoarchitecture was fabricated via the facile electropolymerization of a polyaniline (PANI) network on Fe3O4 particles grown axially on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) of a CNT film for supercapacitor electrode applications. The PANI chains serve as a protective shell to improve the structural stability of the Fe3O4 particles. The resulting supercapacitor exhibits a high specific energy density of 28.0 W h kg(-1), high specific power density of 5.3 kW kg(-1) and specific capacitance of 201 F g(-1) at a scan rate of 20 mV s(-1), surpassing the performances observed for many recently reported flexible supercapacitors. Furthermore, the CNT film-Fe3O4-PANI supercapacitor demonstrates excellent cyclic stability with only a 3.6% loss of its initial specific capacitance after 10 000 charge-discharge cycles. These results suggest that the CNT film-Fe3O4-PANI composite is very promising for next generation high-performance supercapacitors.