Flexible supercapacitor based on electrochemically synthesized pyrrole formyl pyrrole copolymer coated on carbon microfibers

Abstract The main objective of this work is to prepare a flexible supercapacitor using electrochemically synthesized pyrrole formyl pyrrole copolymer P(Py-co-FPy) coated on the carbon microfibers. Due to difficulties of working with carbon microfibers, glassy carbon was used to find out optimized conditions by varying mole ratio of pyrrole and formyl pyrrole monomers on the capacitance value. The prepared electrodes were characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) analysis, cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Then the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was used to characterize the optimized electrode. The specific capacitance is calculated using cyclic voltammetry, charge/discharge method, and impedance spectroscopy. The charge/discharge study reveals that the best specific capacitance is estimated to be 220.3 mF cm−2 for equal mole fraction of pyrrole and formyl pyrrole Py (0.1)-FP (0.1) at discharge current of 3 × 10−4 A. This optimized electrode keeps about 92% of its capacitance value in high current of discharging. The specific capacitances calculated by all the mentioned methods are in agreement with each other. Finally, the found optimized conditions were successfully applied to produce a flexible supercapacitor on the surface of carbon microfibers.