Synthesis and supercapacitor performance of polyaniline-titanium dioxide-samarium oxide (PANI/TiO2-Sm2O3) nanocomposite

Abstract

TiO2-Sm2O3 binary oxide has been successfully synthesized using a two steps photolysis method with UV-irradiation (15 W and 256 nm) as a power source of irradiation system, and it modified PANI during simple oxidative polymerization route to get polyaniline/Sm2O3-TiO2 nanocomposite. The structural, morphology and electrochemical properties of as-synthesized polyaniline /Sm2O3-TiO2 nanocomposite have been estimated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Field Emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), Chronopotentiometry (CP), Cyclic voltammetry (CV) and Electrochemical Impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The measurements from XRD exhibit synthesis anatase TiO2 phase with tetragonal structure and (monoclinic and cubic) mixture structure of Sm2O3. The FE-SEM images display prepare spherical nanoparticles that covered fiber morphology of polyaniline. Interestingly the synthesized polyaniline/Sm2O3-TiO2 nanocomposite demonstrates supercapacitance properties with value 881F/g and 141wh/kg, which observed to be larger than pure polyaniline and polyaniline/Sm2O3. In addition to, the galvanostatic charge–discharge (GCD) properties obtained the nature of pseudocapacitive for PANI/Sm2O3-TiO2 nanocomposite. The EIS results exhibit the superior electrochemical behavior for PANI/TiO2-Sm2O3 compared with PANI and TiO2-Sm2O3.