Enhanced electrochemical performance of polyaniline and hyper-crosslinked porous polymer composite for advanced supercapacitor applications

Supercapacitors are important for advanced energy storage because they have high power density, fast charge-discharge rates, and long cycle life. However, it is difficult to achieve both high energy density and good cycling stability. This study introduces a new composite material. It combines polyaniline (PANI) with a hyper-crosslinked porous polymer (HCP) that includes sulfonyldianiline (SOAM) and cyanuric (Cy) blocks. The PANI@SOAM-Cy HCP composite has a high surface area and good porosity for ion transport and charge storage. PANI adds pseudocapacitance. Cyclic voltammetry (CV), galvanostatic charge-discharge (GCD), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) characterize the electrochemical properties. The PANI@SOAM-Cy HCP composite achieves specific capacitances of 678 F g⁻¹ and 325 F g⁻¹ at 1.0 A g⁻¹ in a three-electrode setup and a symmetric coin cell, respectively. The coin cell reaches an energy density of 45.14 W h kg⁻¹ at a power density of 500 W kg⁻¹ and maintains 17.73 W h kg⁻¹ at 10,000 W kg⁻¹. The composite also shows good cycling stability, keeping 81.89 % of its initial capacitance after 5000 cycles at 10 A g⁻¹.