Conducting Polymer–GO/RGO Nanocomposites: New Generation Hybrid Materials for Supercapacitor Applications

The gradual development of graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide (RGO)-conducting polymer (CP) binary hybrid materials for supercapacitor (SC) applications is overviewed in this chapter. The CPs polyaniline (PAni) and polypyrrole (PPy) can be combined with 2-D, layered, and 3-D networks of GO/RGO using various techniques, e.g., in situ polymerisation, covalent attachment, layer-by-layer (LbL) and template guided assembly. Very often the GO in GO-CP hybrids is reduced to RGO to produce a RGO-CP hybrid. In these composites, there is a strong synergistic effect between the graphene and the CP components, which is the key to the improved SC performance of these materials compared to the pristine GO/RGO and CP. To understand how the synergistic effect affects the material performance, graphene–CP hybrid materials have been classified based on the technique used to combine the CP with graphene. The specific capacitance (at gradually higher current densities) and cycle stability are two major factors that are regularly monitored to quantify the gradual improvement of the hybrids. Capacitance values as high as 1145 F g−1 and cycle stabilities of >5000 cycles have been achieved over the first few years of research in this field. By utilizing some advanced synthetic techniques, graphene–CP-transition metal oxide (TMO) ternary hybrids that demonstrate a manifold improvement in performance have also been created.