Carbon materials have been widely used in designing supercapacitors (SCs) but the capacitance is not ideal. Herein, we synthesize polyaniline (PANI) nanotubes on the basis of a carbon cloth (CC) through a one-step self-degradation template method, and fabricate a CC@PANI NTs-H (CC@PANI nanotubes doping at high temperature) composite electrode by thermal acid doping. The CC@PANI NTs-H electrode obviously exhibits better electrochemical performance with a gravimetric capacitance of 438 F g −1 and maintains 86.8% after 10,000 cycles than the CC@PANI NTs-R (CC@PANI nanotubes doping at room temperature) electrode. Furthermore, we assemble a flexible solid state supercapacitor (FSSC) device with the as-prepared CC@PANI NTs-H composite electrodes, showing good flexibility and outstanding electrochemical performances with a high gravimetric capacitance of 247 F g −1 , a large energy density of 21.9 Wh kg −1 , and a capacitance retention of 85.4% after 10,000 charge and discharge cycles. Our work proposes a novel and easy pathway to fabricate low-cost FSSCs for the development of energy storage devices.
Zinc–air battery (ZAB) has considerable potential to be applied in the energy storage field. The main commercial electrocatalysts are Pt/C and RuO2, which are expensive and cannot possess good bifunctional electrocatalytic activities including oxygen reduction reaction and oxygen evolution reaction. Herein, the rare‐earth metal lanthanum is first constructed to be a Mott–Schottky heterojunction, and the S vacancy is introduced into the Mott–Schottky heterojunction. The so‐obtained La/La2O2S1−x
shows excellent bifunctional electrocatalytic activity with ΔE of 0.68 V, which is superior to La/La2O2S without S vacancies and the commercial Pt/C + RuO2 system. In addition, the La/La2O2S1−x
is assembled into ZABs, showing a high open power density of 212 mW cm−2, and a large specific capacity of 707 mAh g−1, as good cycle stability. The density functional theory calculations reveal the tailoring effect of S vacancy on the Schottky barrier to control the electron transfer concentration and ameliorate over‐strong adsorption, which blocks the reflux of electrons and promotes the unidirectional flow of electrons. In addition, the S vacancy modulates the electron cloud of La‐4f orbit and makes the electrocatalytic pathway closer to the ideal pathway.
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