New trends in electrochemical supercapacitors

The present paper compares the performance of an n/p-type polymer supercapacitor based on n- and p-doped poly(3-methylthiophene) (pMeT) and of a hybrid supercapacitor, based on p-doped pMeT as positive electrode and activated carbon as negative, with that of a double-layer activated carbon supercapacitor (DLCSs), which is representative of the current state of supercapacitor technology. The data on the n/p-type supercapacitor demonstrate that this device is not fully competitive with the DLCSs because of its lower discharge capacity, although all the charge is delivered at high potentials and this makes it suitable for high-voltage applications. The data on the hybrid supercapacitor demonstrate that this device outperforms DLCSs, delivering higher average and maximum specific powers and significantly higher specific energy in the potential region above 1.0 V. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.