Fabrication and Characterization of Flexible Solid Polymers Electrolytes for Supercapacitor Application

Abstract

In this work, solid flexible polymer blend electrolytes (PBE) composed of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) with different amounts of sodium thiocyanate (NaSCN) salt mixed in double-distilled water (solvent) are prepared via solution casting method. The obtained films are characterized using several techniques. The study of the surface morphology of the polymer blend salt complex films via the POM technique reveals the presence of amorphous regions due to the NaSCN effect. FTIR spectra studies confirm the complex formation between PVA, PVP, and NaSCN. The addition of 20 wt% NaSCN salt in the composition PVA: PVP (50:50 wt%) polymer blend matrix leads to an increase in the number of charge carriers and thus improves the ionic conductivity. The ionic conductivity of each polymer blend electrolyte was studied using the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) method. The highest room temperature ionic conductivity of 8.1 × 10−5 S/cm S cm−1 is obtained for the composition of PVA: PVP (50:50 wt%) with 20 wt% NaSCN. LSV test shows the optimized ion-conducting polymer blend electrolyte is electrochemically stable up to 1.5 V. TNM analysis reveals that 99% of ions contribute for the conductivity against 1% of electrons only in the highly conductive polymer electrolyte PVA: PVP (50:50 wt%) + 20 wt% NaSCN. A supercapacitor device was fabricated using the optimized ion-conducting polymer blend film and graphene oxide (GO) coated electrodes. The GCD curve clearly reveals the behavior of an ideal capacitor with less Faradic process and low ESR value. The columbic efficiency of the GO-based system is found to be 100%, the GO-based electrode exhibits a specific capacitance of 12.15 F/g and the system delivers the charge for a long duration. The specific capacitance of the solid-state supercapacitor cell was found to be 13.28 F/g via the CV approach close to 14.25 F/g obtained with EIS data at low frequency.