Facile electrodepositing coral-/urchin-like polyaniline on carbon cloth in salty media as electrode for high-performance flexible supercapacitors

The electrochemical performance of the carbon cloth (CC)-based flexible electrodes is determined by the kind, micro-structure, and morphology of the deposited pseudocapacitive materials. In the present work, the coral-/ urchin-like polyaniline (PANI) was designed to boost the electrochemical property of CC, by integrating the microstructure advantages of coral-like and nanowire arrays, via the facile electrochemical polymerization of aniline on the functionalized carbon cloth (FCC) in salty media. The corresponding electrode delivered a high specific capacitance of 3376 mF cm-2 at 1 mA cm-2 and 151 F g-1 at 1 A g-1, with an ultrahigh boosting in specific capacitance of 246 % and superior cycling stability of 149.8 % after 10,000 cycles, in comparison with the reported PANI/CC ones via electrodeposition. This work provided a new idea for the construction of conductive polymers with unique nano-architectures on CC for high-performance electrodes for flexible supercapacitors.