Polyaniline nanowires aligned on MOFs-derived nanoporous carbon as high-performance electrodes for supercapacitor

Abstract Polyaniline, as the pseudocapacitive electrode material, has been extensively studied for supercapacitors. However, their cycling stability is limited by the structural instability arising from large volumetric swelling/shrinking, which has been the main obstacle to their practical applications. Herein, this work reports metal organic frameworks(MOFs)-derived porous carbon frameworks as the substrate and further deposit polyaniline by in situ chemical polymerization. Benefit from the structurally stable MOFs-derived porous carbon frameworks and the uniformly-deposited conducting polyaniline nanowires with controlled lengths, the synthesized MOFs-derived porous carbon/polyaniline hybrid electrode displays a maximum specific capacitance of 534.16 F g−1 at 0.2 A g−1 and a maximum capacitance retention of 211% at 2 A g−1 after 20000 cycles, demonstrating promising applications for pseudocapacitive devices. The assembled semi-solid symmetrical supercapacitors delivers good electrochemical performance (energy density of 9.72 μWh cm−2) and excellent cyclic stability (94.4% at 10000 cycles), which can also power a commercial LED.