Facile route for multi-walled carbon nanotube coating with polyaniline: tubular morphology nanocomposites for supercapacitor applications

A new approach involving low-temperature system has been developed for the polyaniline/multi-walled carbon nanotubes (PANi/MWCNT) composite in which MWCNT are coated with a layer of PANi in a complete tubular morphology. The MWCNT content varied from 0 to 10 %. The effect of MWCNT content on the thickness of PANi layer was studied. SEM technique was used to investigate the morphology and changes in the dimension of nanotubes. The interaction between PANi and MWCNT considering the nature of chain growth has been explained according to the results of FT-IR analysis. The improvement of thermal stability and crystallinity of the nanocomposites has been evaluated by using TGA and XRD, respectively. The results show the thickness of PANi coating on the surface of MWCNT was depended on the MWCNT content. These nanocomposites have been used for supercapacitor electrodes. The galvanostatic charge–discharge measurements indicated that the PANi/MWCNT composites had greater specific capacitances than pure PANi.

Polyaniline, Tubular morphology, MWCNT, nanocomposite