Polyaniline incorporated self-assembled guanosine monophosphate hydrogel: oxidant templating polymerization and supercapacitor application

Abstract

The fabrication of porous solid-state conducting materials with good mechanical and electrochemical properties is very crucial and challenging. Here we have developed a rapid in situ polymerisation method for the formation of conductive polyaniline nano fibrillar network inside a nucleotide self-assembled network to fabricate a supercapacitor hydrogel with excellent mechanical properties. Guanosine monophosphate is well known for its self-assembly in an acidic environment and utilising the presence of acidic moiety the polymerisation process was carried out. Due to the presence of biomolecules, the hydrogel prepared was sustainable and environment-friendly. This report for the first time shows the stimuli responsiveness of a conductive hydrogel with mechanical properties like self-recovery, patternability, compressibility and self-sustainability, due to the presence of an entangled nucleotide network. The fabricated hydrogel showed excellent stability in the electric field and showed supercapacitor like behaviour with the pseudocapacitive impedance spectroscopy at a higher frequency. Further, this polymerisation method has the scope for extension to other conducting polymers as well.