Polypyrrole-coated cotton fabrics for flexible supercapacitor electrodes prepared using CuO nanoparticles as template

Monodispersed inorganic oxide nanoparticles are one kind of the most commonly used templates for efficient and controllable preparation of conducting polymer nanostructures. In this article, we report the fabrication and characterization of PPy-coated cotton fabrics through in situ chemical polymerization by using CuO nanoparticles as template. The electrical conductivity of the coated samples increases dramatically to 10.0 S cm⁻¹ with the introduction of CuO. The electrochemical properties of the obtained fabrics are examined by cyclic voltammetry and charge/discharge analysis. The increase of scan rate in the range of 5–50 mV s⁻¹ has a small effect on the specific capacitance for the fabric electrode, pointing out the improved ion transportation in this electrode. The charge/discharge test further reveals that the fabric device shows high specific capacitance (225 F g⁻¹ at a current density of 0.6 mA cm⁻²) and good cycling performance (about 92 % capacitance retention after 200 cycles) in aqueous electrolyte. These PPy-coated fabrics have potential to be used as electrode materials for wearable supercapacitors.