Incorporating polyimide cathode materials into porous polyaniline xerogel to optimize the zinc-storage behavior

作者：Huang, Huabo; Wu, Kejia; Ma, Ruping; Huang, Juan^*; Zhang, Xiaoqing; Li, Liang^*; Liu, Yanbo; Xiong, Chuanxi^*

来源：ADVANCED POWDER TECHNOLOGY, 2022, 33(12): 103878.

DOI：10.1016/j.apt.2022.103878

• Polyimide
• Porous structure
• Electrochemical kinetics
• Cathode materials
• Zinc ion batteries

Polyimide is a kind of promising organic-based electrode material for zinc ion batteries (ZIBs), with the merits of resource sustainability, environmental friendliness and structural diversity. At present, how-ever, the study on polyimide-based electrode for ZIBs is fairly few, and the limited conductivity and capacity are also needed to be overcome. Here, a polyimide cathode material denoted as PUI is synthe-sized by using perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic dianhydride and urea, and the zinc-storage performance is comprehensively optimized by taking advantage of a 3-D porous polyaniline (PANI) xerogel carrier, for instance, the specific capacity of PUI/PANI composite is 72 % higher than that of PUI, and the rate perfor-mance and cycling stability are both improved as well. The analysis of electrochemical kinetics reveals that the 3-D porous PANI can facilitate fast electron/ion transportation and high capacitive contribution during discharging and charging. Moreover, the mechanism analysis demonstrates the synergistically enhanced zinc-storage capacity of C=O (in PUI) and =NA (in PANI) in PUI/PANI. This work promotes the application potential of polyimide-based cathode materials, and also highlights the valuable role of porous conducting polymer (e.g., PANI) in constructing high-performance cathode materials for ZIBs.

• 单位
  Wuhan Institute of Technology; Wuhan University of Technology