| Summary: | The increasing demand for portable and flexible energy storage devices drives the development of flexible electrodes and electrolytes. The aim of this work is to fabricate the flexible free-standing polyaniline/poly (vinyl alcohol) (PANI/PVA) composite electrode with good capacitance performance and shape memory behavior. The electrodes were fabricated by chemical oxidation polymerization of aniline in porous PVA (P-PVA) films. The morphology, electrochemical and mechanical properties of PANI/P-PVA electrodes were studied by scanning electron microscope, cyclic voltammetry, galvanostatic charge-discharge, and tensile test etc. The results revealed that the flexible PANI/P-PVA-1 electrode had good specific capacitance of 173.86 mF cm−2 at 1 mA cm−2, with the capacitance retention of 70.16% after 4000 charge-discharge cycles. Besides, it had excellent heat-induced shape memory effect. The fixed shape could completely recover to its original shape within 10 s at 80 °C, which is above the glass transition temperature (75.89 °C) of PANI/P-PVA-1. The comparatively tensile strength (2.86 MPa) and high elongation at break (315.72%) indicated its outstanding flexibility. Up to 200 times folding had no effect on the electrochemical properties. The free-standing polymer electrodes with excellent comprehensive performance provide potential applications in flexible energy-storage devices, electronic encapsulation and high stretchable electric devices etc.
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