Conducting Polymer Nanostructures and their Derivatives for Flexible Supercapacitors

This review provides a brief summary of the recent research developments in the fabrication and application of conducting polymer nanostructures and their derivatives as electrodes for flexible supercapacitors (SCs). By controlling the nucleation and growth process of polymerization, conducting polymers (CPs) with different nanostructures can be prepared by employing chemical polymerization, electrochemical polymerization and photo-induced polymerization. These CPs (such as polyaniline and polypyrrole) with special nanostructures possess high capacitance, superior rate capability ascribed to large electrochemical surface, and optimal ion diffusion path in the ordered nanostructures. The composites of nano-structured conducting polymer and some conductive flexible substrates (such as carbon nanotube film and graphene film) are proved to be ideal electrode materials for high performance flexible SCs. Furthermore, high N-containing CPs are very prospective for preparing N-doped carbon materials used as flexible electrodes for flexible SCs. With respect to the extra pseudo-capacitance induced by N atoms and superior stability derived from the conjugated graphitic structure of carbon materials, the obtained flexible SCs based on N-doped carbon materials could achieve high capacitance, high rate performance, and superior cycling stability.