Polymer based supercapacitors: Selection of material and cell design

Electronically conducting polymers (ECPs) yield different redox supercapacitor configurations: the one with the polymer n-doped form as the negative electrode and the p-doped form as the positive one is the most promising in terms of energy and power. This paper reports the cyclability performance of several composite polymer electrodes based on poly(thiophene), poly(3-methylthiophene) and poly[3-(4-fluorophenyl)thiophene] which were tested for use as positive and negative electrodes for supercapacitors for electric vehicle applications. The best device as to specific energy and power was the unsymmetric supercapacitor with composite poly(3-methylthiophene) negative electrode and composite poly(thiophene) positive electrode.