Carbon Nanotube Template-Assisted Synthesis of Conjugated Microporous Polytriphenylamine with High Porosity for Efficient Supercapacitive Energy Storage

Engineering of conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) with high porosity, redox activity, and electronic conductivity is of significant importance for their practical applications in electrochemical energy storage. Aminated-multiwall carbon nanotubes (NH2-MWNT) are utilized to modulate the porosity and electronic conductivity of polytriphenylamine (PTPA), which is synthesized via Buchwald-Hartwig coupling reaction of tri(4-bromophenyl)amine and phenylenediamine as constitutional units in a one-step in situ polymerization process. Compared to PTPA, the specific surface area of core-shell PTPA@MWNTs has been greatly improved from 32 to 484 m(2) g(-1). The PTPA@MWNTs exhibites an improved specific capacitance, with the highest value 410 F g(-1) in 0.5 M H2SO4 at a current of 10 A g(-1) achieve for PTPA@MWNT-4 due to the hierarchical meso-micro pores, high redox-activity and electronic conductivity. Symmetric supercapacitor assemble by PTPA@MWNT-4 has a capacitance of 216 F g(-1) of total electrode materials and retains 71% of initial capacitance after 6000 cycles. This study gives new insights into the role of CNT templates in the adjustment of molecular structure, porosity, and electronic property of CMPs for the high-performance electrochemical energy storage.