Electrochemical study of perlite-barium ferrite/conductive polymer nano composite for super capacitor applications

Polyaniline/perlite-barium ferrite nanoparticles (PANI/PBF-NPs) composite electrodes were studied in here for super capacitor applications. The PBF-NPs synthesized using hydrothermal technique and then the composite electrode was fabricated electrochemically by cyclic voltammetry (CV) technique. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller nitrogen adsorption/desorption (BET) and fast Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were employed to study the morphological and structural properties of the prepared electrodes. Furthermore, various electrochemical techniques were used such as CV, Galvano static charge-discharge (GCD) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) to investigate their electrochemical performance as well. SEM graphs show uniform distribution of 60-nm PBF-NPs in the PANI filaments. The specific capacitance of PANI and composite electrodes was obtained to be 225 and 330 F/g, respectively. In addition, inclusion of PBF-NPs in the structure of PANI electrode had significantly increased the conductivity of composite electrodes. Continuous charge-discharge cycles test illustrated the good capability of this nano composite material for use as a charge storage device.