Pseudocapacitive-dye-molecule-based high-performance flexible supercapacitors.

Currently, the development of novel, cheap and high-performance electrode materials for flexible energy-storage devices is being intensively pursued. Organic dyes are regarded as one of the most common water pollution sources, and their discharge not only damages the ecological balance but also wastes a lot of valuable chemical raw materials. With intrinsic redox functional groups, two types of widely used dyes including anthraquinone derivatives and phenothiazine dyes can be effectively removed from their effluent by a facile galvanostatic polymerization method, and resource utilized as electrochemical energy-storage materials. Based on this, a new kind of flexible supercapacitor based on dye molecules has been successfully fabricated, and exhibits excellent electrochemical performance, demonstrating a wise strategy for simultaneous wastewater treatment and preparation of functional devices.