Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) has attracted extensive attention in energy storage due to its suitable and tunable bandgap, high chemical/thermal stability, earth abundance and environmental friendliness. However, its conductivity should be improved to work as the electrode materials in supercapacitors. In this report, we have prepared a two-dimensional composite (CN-PANI) based on g-C3N4 and polyaniline (PANI) by in-situ polymerization, which can be efficiently applied as electrode material for supercapacitors. The introduction of PANI can increase the conductivity of the electrode, and the porous structure of g-C3N4 can provide enough channels for the transport of electrolyte ions and improve the electrode stability. As a result, the obtained CN-PANI demonstrates excellent specific capacitance (234.0 F g− 1 at 5 mV/s), good rate performance and high cycling stability (86.2% after 10,000 cycles at 50 mV/s), showing great potential for high-rate supercapacitors.

Polyaniline-modified graphitic carbon nitride as electrode materials for high-performance supercapacitors
    Abstract
    1 Introduction
    2 Experimental section
        2.1 Materials
        2.2 Preparation of bulk g-C3N4
        2.3 Preparation of CN-PANI composites
        2.4 Characterizations
        2.5 Electrochemical measurements
    3 Results and discussions
    4 Conclusions
    Acknowledgements 
    References

• Xin Qin(Hubei Key Laboratory of Plasma Chemistry and Advanced Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430205, China)
• Jianbo Wan(Hubei Key Laboratory of Plasma Chemistry and Advanced Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430205, China)
• Qi Zhang(Hubei Key Laboratory of Plasma Chemistry and Advanced Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430205, China)
• Yongjie Zhang(Hubei Key Laboratory of Plasma Chemistry and Advanced Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430205, China)
• Huangzhong Yu(School of Physics and Optoelectronics, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China)
• Shengwei Shi(Hubei Key Laboratory of Plasma Chemistry and Advanced Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430205, China, Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Chemical Materials and Devices (Ministry of Education), Jianghan University, Wuhan 430056, China)