Effect of morphology and phase engineering of MoS2 on electrochemical properties of carbon nanotube/polyaniline@MoS2 composites

This paper rationally designs the morphology and phase structure of carbon nanotube/polyaniline@MoS2 (CNT/PANI@MoS2) composites, with MoS2 conductive wrapping growing vertically on the outer layer of the composites via hydrothermal method. The crystalline nature and chemical properties are characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Flourier transformation infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), Raman spectroscopy (Raman), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Morphology and microstructures are determined by Scanning electric microscopy (SEM), Transmission electron microscope (TEM) and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET). The developed composites possess excellent electrochemical properties (the specific capacitance is substantially increased by ~119%, reaching 700.0 F g−1 after wrapping by MoS2) and good cycling stability (after over 5000 cycles retains 80.8% capacitance) in three-electrode systems, which indicating that the unique morphology of MoS2 shells endow the channels to composites for rapid charge transport and ionic diffusion. Furthermore, symmetric supercapacitors devices assembled with the CNT/PANI@MoS2 composites achieve specific capacitance of 459.7 F g−1 at 1 A g−1, capacitance retention is 97.4% after 10,000 cycles and reach superior energy density of 40.9 Wh kg−1 at the power density of 400 W kg−1. This strategy of three-dimensional wrapping method may open up a new potential to relieve the dilemma of degraded performance of supercapacitor, while improving the capacitance and stability for supercapacitors.