Abstract:

Porous polyaniline (PANI) is prepared through an efficient and cost-effective method by polymerisation of aniline in a HCl solution containing KCl. The KCl solution serves as a pseudo-template for the formation of porous PANI, thereby avoiding the use of organic solvents and hard/soft templates and thus protecting the environment. Because of its highly porous structure and intercrossed nanorods, PANI provides a large surface area, resulting in good electrochemical performance. The porous PANI electrodes show a high specific capacitance of 800 F$\cdot$g-1 prepared with saturated KCl, which is more than six times than that of PANI prepared without KCl as the pseudo-template. Thus, synthesised PANI is an excellent electrode material for supercapacitors and is of great significance in their practical application.

Key words: polyaniline (PANI), porous, supercapacitors, electrochemical property