Waste tire derived carbon-polymer composite paper as pseudocapacitive electrode with long cycle life

Recycling hazardous wastes to produce value-added products is becoming essential for the sustainable progress of our society. Herein, highly porous carbon (1625âm² g^-1) is synthesized using waste tires as the precursor and used as a supercapacitor electrode material. The narrow pore-size distribution and high surface area led to good charge storage capacity, especially when used as a three-dimensional nanoscaffold to polymerize polyaniline (PANI). The composite paper was highly flexible, conductive, and exhibited a capacitance of 480âF g^-1 at 1âmV s^-1 with excellent capacitance retention of up to 98 % after 10 000 charge/discharge cycles. The high capacitance and long cycle life were ascribed to the short diffusional paths, uniform PANI coating, and tight confinement of the PANI in the inner pores of the tire-derived carbon through π-π interactions, which minimized the degradation of the PANI upon cycling. We anticipate that the same strategy can be applied to deposit other pseudocapacitive materials to achieve even higher electrochemical performance and longer cycle life - a key challenge for redox active polymers. Tire-derived carbon: Converting waste into value-added products is critically required for the sustainable development of our society. Here, we convert waste tires into carbon by sulfonation and pyrolysis followed by chemical activation. As-produced carbon demonstrates high charge storage capacity and serves as an excellent conductive support for the deposition of conducting polymers.