Characterisations of carbon-fenced conductive silver nanowires-supported hierarchical polyaniline nanowires

Abstract The novel carbon-fenced conductive silver nanowires-supported hierarchical polyaniline nanowires have been successfully designed to exploit the synergistic effect for electrochemical energy storage. The electronic conductive hybrid polyaniline@carbon@silver nanowires nanocomposite electrode leads to a high specific capacity (785 C/g at 0.5 A/g) and good cycling stability (94.1% after 3000 cycles) compared with the electrode without silver nanowires, and it is also superior or close to some polyaniline-based materials. The presence of silver nanowires on hierarchical polyaniline nanowires may provide a least resistance path to electrons, which can accelerate electron transport between the current collector and the active material to enhance the specific capacity. The carbon shell fenced on conductive silver nanowires can be served as a good physical substrate to promote the polyaniline growth with well-defined hierarchical structure, and hold the polyaniline fragments together and maintain their electrochemical stability during charge-discharge process. The excellent electrochemical behavior is in combination with the ideal form of hierarchical architecture, which suggests that the as-prepared polyaniline@carbon@silver nanowires electrode has the significant potential to be used as a promising electrode material for lightweight and flexible energy storage devices.