Polyaniline/carbon nanotubes-decorated activated carbon fiber felt as high-performance, free-standing and flexible supercapacitor electrodes

Polyaniline (PANI) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are introduced into activated carbon fiber felt (ACFF) to fabricate ACFF/PANI/CNT composite textiles as free-standing and flexible electrodes of supercapacitors. ACFF is an electrochemically active substrate with an electric double-layer capacitance of 2442 mF/cm2, and deposited PANI further offers a large pseudocapacitance. Meanwhile, CNTs optimize the electrical property of the ACFF/PANI/CNT textiles. Consequently, areal capacitance, energy density and power density of the composite textiles are as large as 5611 mF/cm2, 185 μWh/cm2 and 4517 μW/cm2, respectively, much higher than those of many previously reported flexible supercapacitor electrodes. Besides, the textiles display good rate capability, cycling stability and mechanical flexibility. Overall, our flexible textile electrodes are promising to be utilized to power wearable electronics.