Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 October 2012
Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) electrodes are prepared by a novel ultrashort galvanic pulse electropolymerization technique for application in solid-state supercapacitors. Microstructure studies using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) show that PEDOT electrodes deposited by pulse polymerization are highly porous as compared to the conventional potentiostatic polymerization. In addition, as revealed by the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) studies in the PEDOT films formed by pulse polymerization, the polymer chains are fully conjugated with the dopant ClO4- ions. Solid-state supercapacitor cells using pulse polymerized PEDOT electrodes and ionic liquid gel polymer electrolyte were fabricated and characterized. The impedance spectroscopy studies show that the pulse polymerized PEDOT electrode have specific capacitance value of ∼ 65 F g-1 as compared to ∼52 F g-1for potentiostatically polymerized PEDOT and significantly lower interfacial and charge transfer resistance. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) and galvanostatic charge-discharge characterization show highly capacitive behavior of the supercapacitor cells in the solid-state configuration.