Smart-Fabric-Based Supercapacitor with Long-Term Durability and Waterproof Properties toward Wearable Applications

Abstract

The rapid development of wearable electronics and smart textiles has dramatically motivated the generation of flexible textile-based supercapacitors (SCs). However, the rapid evaporation of water moisture in gel electrolyte substantially limits the working durability and performance enhancements of the flexible devices. Therefore, a high-performance multifunctional textilebased SC with long-term durability is highly desired. Herein, a poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA)/polyacrylamide (PAM) composite gel electrolyte was developed to fabricate multifunctional device with water-retaining and water-proofing properties based on multidimensional hierarchical fabric. And the assembled SC based on composite gel exhibited a superior water-retaining property and long-term working durability (93.29% retention rate after operation for 15 days), whereas the performance of SC based on pure PVA gel declined sharply and only 43.2% capacitance remained. In addition, the assembled SC exhibited enhanced specific capacitance of 707.9 mF/cm 2 and high energy density of 62.92 μWh/cm 2 and maintained a good stability of 80.8% even after 10 000 cyclic tests. After water repellency treatment, the integrated device immersed in water could still work normally. What's more, the assembled devices could be charged by a portable hand generator, which could be potentially applied for field rescue and military applications. We foresee that this strategy would be a potential route to prepare high-performance multifunctional textile-based SCs for wearable electronic systems and smart textile applications.

A New Class of Electronic Devices Based on Flexible Porous Substrates

“…Among them, cellulose-based paper/fabrics have drawn much attention as biodegradable substrates for green energy storage devices. Electrochemical active cellulose-based electrodes can be produced by integrating cellulose fibers with metals, [185] carbon-based materials, [238] polymers (e.g., PEDOT, [239] PANI), [240] MXenes, [241] or their composites. [242] For instance, inspired by the sophisticated structures of hedgehog spines, Li et al [239] created a multidimensional hierarchical fabric-based SC with enhanced energy storage performance.…”

Weaving a magnificent world: 1D fibrous electrodes and devices for stretchable and wearable electronics

“…93 Flexible energy storage devices are those that remain stable under deformation conditions such as twisting, folding, compression, or stretching. 58,94 Fiber-shaped flexible supercapacitors/batteries have the characteristics of small size, high flexibility, light weight, and high space efficiency, which can be used in portable or wearable electronic devices, and are an excellent flexible energy storage electronic device. [95][96][97] On the one hand, these fibrous energy storage systems with diameters ranging from tens of microns to hundreds of microns can adapt to various deformations and operate stably in close contact with the human body.…”

Mapping the Progress in Flexible Electrodes for Wearable Electronic Textiles: Materials, Durability, and Applications

“…developed a high‐performance water‐proofing supercapacitor by fabricating poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA)/polyacrylamide (PAM) composite gel electrolyte on multidimensional hierarchical fabric. [ 451 ] The assembled supercapacitor provided superior energy density and specific capacitance of 62.92 μWh cm −2 and 707.9 mF cm −2 , respectively, and also retained 80.8% stability even after 10 000 cyclic tests. Some prominent innovations in textile‐based energy storage devices are tabulated in Table 16 .…”

“…[480] After five layers of coating, the as-prepared fabric needed only 7.5 V to actuate a temperature alteration up to 38 °C at a current density of 0.3 A g -1 . This scalable coating process ensured a highly flexible and robust Cycling stability over 10 000 cycles [463] Graphene/PANI Fabric LbL-assembly SC 707.9 mF cm -2 Retained 80.8% stability even after 10 000 cyclic tests [451] www.advelectronicmat.de thermoelectric fabric by providing improved uniformity of the coating thickness. Different carbonaceous materials were also embedded with textiles to produce the high-performance wearable heating device.…”