Fluoro-substituted conjugated polyindole for desirable electrochemical charge storage materials

Key Words:Supercapacitors; Conducting polymers; 5-Fluoroindole; Electrochemical polymerization

Abstract:Fluoropolymers have great values in the scientific research and the industrial application, but poor electrochemical properties restricted their use as charge storage materials. In this work, we developed a high-performance poly(5-fluoroindole) (5-PFIn) as charge storage material by simple electrodeposition of 5-fluoroindole in acetonitrile solution containing 0.1 M Bu4NBF4. The morphologies, structures and electrochemical properties of as-prepared 5-PFIn were studied by SEM, FT-IR, UV-vis, BET and electrochemical techniques, respectively. The electrochemical results indicated that the 5-PFIn nanowires in 1.0 M H2SO4 electrolyte showed a full-covered strongly responsive redox behavior between -0.4 V and 0.85 V, which remarkably differed from polyindole (PIn) and poly(5-methoxyindole) (5-PMeOIn) and poly(indole-5-carboxylic acid) (5-PICA). As a result, 5-PFIn exhibited high specific capacitance of 416 F g(-1) at 10 A g(-1), good cycling stability of 83% after 5000 cycles and slow self-discharge behavior, which were superior to those of PIn (103 F g(-1), 68%), 5-PMeOIn (114 F g(-1), 70%) and 5-PICA (286 F g(-1), 70%). These results indicated that the fluorine-substituted conjugated PIn will be one of the most promising fluoropolymers electrode materials for supercapacitor application.

Volume:320

Issue:0

Translation or Not:no