Fiber-shaped supercapacitors have drawn much attention for their great potential application in future portable and wearable electronics because of their outstanding flexibility, tiny volume, and good deformability. In this work, commercial poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) thread was successfully converted into an electrically conductive and electrochemically active thread by introducing copper sulfide (CuS) and polyaniline (PANI) via simple chemical bath deposition and electrochemical deposition. The obtained PANI/CuS/PET electrode combined all the advantages of PET, CuS, and PANI, showing an excellent physical and electrochemical performance. The fiber-shaped supercapacitor exhibits a high specific capacitance of 29 mF cm −2 (116 mF cm −2 for a single electrode) and good cycling stability with 93.1% retention after 1000 cycles. With the simple preparation method and low-cost raw materials, this strategy provides a reference for the fabrication of portable/wearable energy storage devices.
Nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon (NHPC) materials were synthesized by using a chitosan/ polyethylene glycol (PEG) blend as raw material through a facile carbonization-activation process. In this method, chitosan was used as a nitrogen-containing carbon precursor, low cost and large-scale commercial PEG was employed as a porogen. The physical and electrochemical properties of the resultant NHPC were affected by the ratio of chitosan and PEG. The sample obtained by the ratio of 3 : 2 exhibits a high specific surface area (2269 m 2 g À1 ), moderate nitrogen doping (3.22 at%) and optimized pore structure. It exhibits a high specific capacitance of 356 F g À1 in 1 M H 2 SO 4 and 271 F g À1 in 2 M KOH at a current density of 1 A g À1 , and over 230 F g À1 can be still retained at a high current density of 20 A g À1 in both electrolytes. Additionally, the assembled symmetric supercapacitors show an excellent cycling stability with 94% (in 1 M H 2 SO 4 ) and 97% (in 2 M KOH) retention after 10 000 cycles at 1 A g À1 . These results indicate that the chitosan/PEG blend can act as a novel and appropriate precursor to prepare low-cost NHPC materials for high-performance supercapacitors.
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