Fabrication and Seamless Integration of Insensitive-Bending Fully Printed All-in-One Fabric-Based Supercapacitors Based on Cost-Effective MWCNT Electrodes

Abstract

All-in-one supercapacitors are considered to be promising due to their advantages of flexibility and structure stability. However, the sophisticated and precise manufacturing processes and difficulty of series/parallel integration hinder their application and development. Herein, cost-effective all-in-one fabric-based supercapacitors (all-in-one FSCs) are fabricated by utilizing the facile screen-printing technique and multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) electrodes. The MWCNT electrodes are constructed on the gel-electrolyte-soaked fabric that simultaneously serves as separator and electrode substrates. The as-prepared all-in-one FSC exhibits better capacitive behavior and rate capability and lower internal resistance than traditional sandwiched fabric-based supercapacitors (sandwiched FSCs). Moreover, due to the simplified structure and interface interaction, the all-in-one FSC shows excellent flexibility and stability even under dynamic bending cycles with a relatively high strain rate of 20% s–1. This work also demonstrates the seamless series/parallel integration scheme of all-in-one supercapacitors by designing the screen-printing patterns instead of using metal wires. The proposed fabrication process and series/parallel integration scheme definitely improve the portability of integrated supercapacitors and potentially contribute to the large-scale production and application on wearable electronics.

Advances in Printing and Electronics: From Engagement to Commitment

“…The proposed sandwiched and all-together SCs revealed areal capacitances of 4.17, and 4.16 mF cm −2 (20 mV s −1 scanning rate), respectively, maintaining their flexibility and high stability even under dynamic bending with high strain rate (20% s −1 ). [368] Sustainability concerns were introduced on the development of microSCs prepared on ultrathin parylene C substrates, using both electrode and gel electrolyte based on cellulose. The printed ≈11 µm thick micro SCs presented a volumetric capacitance of 7 F cm −3 , and a high value of capacitance retention after extreme bending (90% after 10000 operational cycles, and 98% after 1000 cycles).…”

“…The proposed sandwiched and all‐together SCs revealed areal capacitances of 4.17, and 4.16 mF cm −2 (20 mV s −1 scanning rate), respectively, maintaining their flexibility and high stability even under dynamic bending with high strain rate (20% s −1 ). [ 368 ]…”

Recent Advances in Functional Fabric‐Based Wearable Supercapacitors

“…Hence, both electrodes in the sandwiched supercapacitor would simultaneously endure compression and tensile force under bending deformation, resulting in electrode distortion and unstable electrochemical performance. [137,138]…”

Ice crystal-assisted intercalation of PANI within Ti3C2Tx MXene thin films for flexible supercapacitor electrodes with simultaneously high mechanical strength and rate performance

“…[6][7][8] Two-dimensional (2D) thin lms, assembled from layered materials (such as graphene and MXene) with a thickness ranging from nanometers to micrometers, have been widely investigated in the eld of exible SCs because of their high surface-area-to-volume ratios, leading to high volumetric capacitance. 9 A lot of fabrication methods, such as screen-printing, 10 vacuum ltration, 11 blade-coating 12 and layerby-layer deposition, 13 have been developed to obtain thin-lm electrodes. However, developing freestanding thin-lm electrodes that possess good exibility, high mechanical strength and fast ion transport channels for wearable SCs is still challenging.…”