Investigation of a Pseudo Capacitor with Polyacrylonitrile based Gel Polymer Electrolyte

Pseudo capacitors belong to one group of super capacitors which are consisted with non carbon based electrodes. As such, conducting polymers and metal oxide materials have been employed for pseudo capacitors. Conducting polymer based pseudo capacitors have received a great attention due to their interesting features such as flexibility, low cost and ease of synthesis. Much work has been done using liquid electrolytes for those pseudo capacitors but has undergone various drawbacks. It has now been realized the use of solid polymer electrolytes as an alternative. Among them gel polymer electrolytes (GPEs) are in a key place due to their high ambient temperature conductivities as well as suitable mechanical properties. In this study, composition of a polyacrylonitrile (PAN) based GPE was optimized and it was employed as the electrolyte in a pseudo capacitor having polypyrrole (PPy) electrodes. GPE was prepared using ethylene carbonate (EC), propylene carbonate (PC), sodium thiocyanate (NaSCN) and PAN as starting materials. The maximum room temperature conductivity of the GPE was $1.92{\times}10^{-3}Scm^{-1}$ for the composition 202.5 PAN : 500 EC : 500 PC : 35 NaSCN (by weight). Performance of the pseudo capacitor was investigated using Cyclic Voltammetry technique, Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) technique and Continuous Charge Discharge (GCD) test. The single electrode specific capacity (Cs) was found out to be 174.31 F/g using Cyclic Voltammetry technique at the scan rate of 10 mV/s and within the potential window -1.2 V to 1.2 V. The same value obtained using EIS was about 84 F/g. The discharge capacity ($C_d$) was 69.8 F/g. The capacity fade over 1000 cycles was rather a low value of 4%. The results proved the suitability of the pseudo capacitor for improving the performance further.