Highly Flexible and All-Solid-State Paperlike Polymer Supercapacitors

TLDR

Recent work has focused on creating thin, lightweight, and flexible energy‑storage devices for wearable electronics. The authors aim to develop an ultrathin, all‑solid‑state supercapacitor that offers new design possibilities for wearable electronics. They fabricate the device by assembling two slightly separated polyaniline electrodes solidified in an H₂SO₄‑polyvinyl alcohol gel electrolyte using a simple process. The resulting paper‑like device, only as thick as an A4 sheet, delivers a specific capacitance of 350 F g⁻¹ for the electrodes, 31.4 F g⁻¹ overall, remains stable over 1,000 cycles with a leakage current of 17.2 µA, and exceeds commercial supercapacitors by more than sixfold.

Abstract

In recent years, much effort have been dedicated to achieve thin, lightweight and even flexible energy-storage devices for wearable electronics. Here we demonstrate a novel kind of ultrathin all-solid-state supercapacitor configuration with an extremely simple process using two slightly separated polyaniline-based electrodes well solidified in the H2SO4-polyvinyl alcohol gel electrolyte. The thickness of the entire device is much comparable to that of a piece of commercial standard A4 print paper. Under its highly flexible (twisting) state, the integrate device shows a high specific capacitance of 350 F/g for the electrode materials, well cycle stability after 1000 cycles and a leakage current of as small as 17.2 μA. Furthermore, due to its polymer-based component structure, it has a specific capacitance of as high as 31.4 F/g for the entire device, which is more than 6 times that of current high-level commercial supercapacitor products. These highly flexible and all-solid-state paperlike polymer supercapacitors may bring new design opportunities of device configuration for energy-storage devices in the future wearable electronic area.