Rapid synthesis of hierarchical nanostructured Polyaniline hydrogel for high power density energy storage application and three-dimensional multilayers printing

Conducting polymer hydrogels are emerging as a promising class of materials that combine the advantageous features of conventional hydrogels and organic conductors, and would potentially be used in many applications, especially for energy storage devices. To overcome the drawbacks of conventional synthesis, this work describes the use of amino trimethylene phosphonic acid as the gelator and dopant for rapidly fabricating hierarchical nanostructured polyaniline (PAni) hydrogel with excellent electronic conductivity and electrochemical properties. Owing to 3D porous nanostructures and high surface area, the PAni hydrogel exhibits potential as high-performance supercapacitor electrodes with specific capacitance over 420 F g−1. Furthermore, the rapidly formed PAni hydrogel was first used for 3D multilayer printing of micro-patterns due to the unique synthesis method and desirable processability. Taken together, these results suggest that the PAni hydrogel networks exhibit highly useful for a broad range of applications.