Abstract
•Selenium (Se) nanoparticles were synthesized by utilizing an aqueous plant leaf extract.•Nanocomposites films were prepared based on Cs and PAM with Ag/Se nanoparticles.•The Cs/PAM-Ag/Se NPs film has the maximum ionic conductivity and optical activity.•The resulting nanocomposites films can be for energy storage devices.
This paper describes a simple, efficient, and promising approach for making nanocomposite polymer systems using chitosan (Cs) and polyacrylamide (PAM) as the host polymer with Ag/Se nanofiller for electrical energy storage uses. The ATR spectroscopy and XRD methods were used to investigate the structure of the prepared samples. The UV–Visible spectroscopy was utilized to investigate the optical properties. Tauc's plot was used to calculate the energy band-gap values of Cs/PAM and Ag/Se nanocomposite films. When Ag/Se ions are included in Cs/PAM blend films, the Urbach energy increase and reduce the optical energy gap, which means the optical properties is improved. The frequency-dependent AC conductivity of the nanocomposites was used to analyze the dynamic ion behavior of all the as- produced films. At varied contents of the Ag/Se nanofiller and at ambient temperatures, the ε′ and ε′′ as well as the M′ and M′′ vs. frequency graphs of the polymer blend, were also reported. The relaxation frequency of the nanocomposites films was determined from the M′′ spectra. With increasing Ag/Se concentration, the ionic conductivity of nanocomposite samples was discovered to rise. The optimized nanocomposites demonstrated optical and ionic conductivity, making them suitable for electrochemical applications such as flexible capacitors, energy storage devices, and separators in batteries.