Polypyrrole Nanocomposites Reinforced with Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotube

The performance of conducting polymer/carbon nanotube nanocomposites have attracted much attention because of the enhanced electrical, optical, mechanical and thermal properties. They are promising electrode materials for high power supercapacitor because of the large pseudocapacitance offered by the conducting polymers and excellent mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes. In this work, a simple approach to synthesize nanocomposite of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and polypyrrole (PPy) is described. Polypyrrole vapors were chemically deposited on the surface of oxidized multi-walled carbon nanotubes. The morphology and structure of the nanocomposite was characterized by SEM and FT-IR. The results suggested that polypyrrole coated the MWCNTs uniformly. Thermal gravimetric analysis was performed to study the effect of the reinforcement of MWCNTs in polypyrrole matrix. It was found that MWCNTs increased the thermal stability of polypyrrole significantly. Cyclic voltammetry was used to study the electrochemical charge storage properties of the nanocomposite towards the application as electrode material for supercapacitors.