Heterostructural conductive polymer with multi-dimensional carbon materials for capacitive energy storage

Highlights: • Optimize conductive polymer-based electrodes by compositing multi-dimensional carbons. • The capacitance of PEDOT:PSS/rGO film increase to 215.6 F g⁻¹ at 1 A g⁻¹. • Provide a comparatively meaningful reference for the capacitive energy storage field. The rapid development of flexible smart electronics upgrades the renewal of energy storage equipment, especially supercapacitors. Conductive polymers (CPs) with easily regulative structures are expected to apply in supercapacitors as excellent electrode materials. In this work, composite materials systems based on a single high-conductivity CP, poly (3, 4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrenesulfonate (PEDOT:PSS), are used to explore the effect of structural regulation on the capacitive performance by compositing with multi-dimensional carbon materials (0D C₆₀, 1D SWCNT, and 2D rGO). Benefited from the structural regulation of multi-dimensional carbon materials, composite films show improved capacitance performance, especially PEDOT:PSS/rGO film reveals 1.25 times improved specific capacitance value and a good rate capability (~97.8%). This study provides a feasible reference for the design and optimization of CP-based composites for supercapacitors.