Preparation of mesoporous carbon/polypyrrole composite materials and their supercapacitive properties

Abstract

We synthesized mesoporous carbons/polypyrrole composites, using a chemical oxidative polymerization and calcium carbonate as a sacrificial template. N₂ adsorption-desorption method, Fourier infrared spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy were used to characterize the structure and morphology of the composites. The measurement results indicated that as-synthesized carbon with the disordered mesoporous structure and a pore size of approximately 5 nm was uniformly coated by polypyrrole. The electrochemical behavior of the resulting composite was examined by cyclic voltammetry and cycle life measurements, and the obtained results showed that the specific capacitance of the resulting composite electrode was as high as 313 F g⁻¹, nearly twice the capacitance of pure mesoporous carbon electrode (163 F g^–1). This reveals that the electrochemical performance of these materials is governed by a combination of the electric double layer capacitance of mesoporous carbon and pseudocapacitance of polypyrrole.