Active Faraday reactions in a polyaniline and titanium carbide MXene composite for enhanced supercapacitive performance

Energy storage research has been pushed hard in recent years, largely because the demand for efficient and sustainable solutions keeps growing. Supercapacitors, in particular, came into the spotlight in recent years. They deliver high power and hold up well over long cycle life, but they store less energy per unit mass and this is the genuine obstacle to their widespread commercial application. To address this, we report a facile and scalable physical blending approach to prepare a Ti₃C₂T _x MXene-polyaniline composite with significantly enhanced energy storage performance. The stacked lamellar structured Ti₃C₂T _x MXene, extracted from a Ti₃AlC₂ MAX phase precursor, provides a highly conductive framework, while PANI offers abundant redox-active sites. This used approach allows effective interfacial contact between Ti₃C₂T _x sheets and PANI while preserving the layer structure of the MXene. Characterization tools such as XRD, SEM, and EDS confirmed the successful extraction of stacked lamellar Ti₃C₂T _x MXene with minimal Al content, and the preparation of the Ti₃C₂T _x /PANI composite without showing impurities. The electrochemical analysis of the synthesized Ti₃C₂T _x /PANI nanocomposite shows improved gravimetric capacitance (C _SP) of 839.2 Fg^-1 at 1 Ag^-1, which is substantially greater than that of the pure MXene (413.5 Fg^-1) and PANI (615.8 Fg^-1). The prepared electrode achieved an energy density (E _d) of 41.9 Wh kg^-1 at a power density (P _d) of 300 W kg^-1. Furthermore, the two-electrode measurements of Ti₃C₂T _x /PANI//AC displayed enhanced C _SP of 158.4 Fg^-1 with an improved E _d of 140.8 Wh kg^-1. The Ti₃C₂T _x /PANI//AC displayed stability of 102.6% at the end of 1000 cycles. These findings demonstrate that the Ti₃C₂T _x /PANI can be adopted as an optimal choice for supercapacitors.