Flexible and stretchable conducting composites that can sense stress or strain are needed for several emerging fields including human motion detection and personalized health monitoring. Silver nanowires (AgNWs) have already been used as conductive networks. However, once a traditional polymer is broken, the conductive network is subsequently destroyed. Integrating high pressure sensitivity and repeatable self‐healing capability into flexible strain sensors represents new advances for high performance strain sensing. Herein, superflexible 3D architectures are fabricated by sandwiching a layer of AgNWs decorated self‐healing polymer between two layers of polydimethylsiloxane, which exhibit good stability, self‐healability, and stretchability. For better mechanical properties, the self‐healing polymer is reinforced with carbon fibers (CFs). The sensors based on self‐healing polymer and AgNWs conductive network show high conductivity and excellent ability to repair both mechanical and electrical damage. They can detect different human motions accurately such as bending and recovering of the forearm and shank, the changes of palm, fist, and fingers. The fracture tensile stress of the reinforced self‐healing polymer (9 wt% CFs) is increased to 10.3 MPa with the elongation at break of 8%. The stretch/release responses under static and dynamic loads of the sensor have a high sensitivity, large sensing range, excellent reliability, and remarkable stability.
The application of graphene for electrochemical energy storage has received tremendous attention; however, challenges remain in synthesis and other aspects. Here we report the synthesis of high-quality, nitrogen-doped, mesoporous graphene particles through chemical vapor deposition with magnesium-oxide particles as the catalyst and template. Such particles possess excellent structural and electrochemical stability, electronic and ionic conductivity, enabling their use as high-performance anodes with high reversible capacity, outstanding rate performance (e.g., 1,138 mA h g
−1
at 0.2 C or 440 mA h g
−1
at 60 C with a mass loading of 1 mg cm
−2
), and excellent cycling stability (e.g., >99% capacity retention for 500 cycles at 2 C with a mass loading of 1 mg cm
−2
). Interestingly, thick electrodes could be fabricated with high areal capacity and current density (e.g., 6.1 mA h cm
−2
at 0.9 mA cm
−2
), providing an intriguing class of materials for lithium-ion batteries with high energy and power performance.
Flexible energy-storage devices based on supercapacitors rely largely on the scrupulous design of flexible electrodes with both good electrochemical performance and high mechanical properties. Here, nitrogen-doped carbon nanofiber networks/reduced graphene oxide/bacterial cellulose (N-CNFs/RGO/BC) freestanding paper is first designed as a high-performance, mechanically tough, and bendable electrode for a supercapacitor. The BC is exploited as both a supporting substrate for a large mass loading of 8 mg cm and a biomass precursor for N-CNFs by pyrolysis. The one-step carbonization treatment not only fabricates the nitrogen-doped three-dimensional (3D) nanostructured carbon composite materials but also forms the reduction of the GO sheets at the same time. The fabricated paper electrode exhibits an ultrahigh areal capacitance of 2106 mF cm (263 F g) in a KOH electrolyte and 2544 mF cm (318 F g) in a HSO electrolyte, exceptional cycling stability (∼100% retention after 20000 cycles), and excellent tensile strength (40.7 MPa). The symmetric supercapacitor shows a high areal capacitance (810 mF cm in KOH and 920 mF cm in HSO) and thus delivers a high energy density (0.11 mWh cm in KOH and 0.29 mWh cm in HSO) and a maximum power density (27 mW cm in KOH and 37.5 mW cm in HSO). This work shows that the new procedure is a powerful and promising way to design flexible and freestanding supercapacitor electrodes.
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