Polyaniline/Poly(acrylamide-co-sodium acrylate) Porous Conductive Hydrogels with High Stretchability by Freeze-Thaw-Shrink Treatment for Flexible Electrodes

With the development of alternatives to traditional fossil energy and the rise of wearable technology, flexible energy storage devices have attracted great attention. In this paper, a polyaniline/poly(acrylamide-sodium acrylate copolymer) hydrogel (PASH) with high flexibility and excellent electrochemical properties for flexible electrodes is fabricated by freeze-thaw-shrink treatment of a highly water-absorptive hydrogel, together with in-situ polymerization of aniline at a low aniline concentration (0.1 mol L −1 ). The PASH exhibits a conductivity of 4.05 S m −1 and an elongation at break of 1245%. The freeze-thaw-shrink treatment greatly improves the electrochemical performance and stability of the conductive PASH. The area specific capacitance of PASH reaches 849 mF cm −2 and the capacitance maintains 89% after 1000 galvanostatic charge–discharge cycles. All the raw materials are conventional industrialized materials and no additional templating agent is needed during the entire synthesis process. This study provides a cost-efficient approach for the fabrication of conductive polymer hydrogels, which has a broad application prospect in flexible energy storage electronic devices.