Fully Printed Ultraflexible Supercapacitor Supported by a Single-Textile Substrate

Textile-based supercapacitors have recently attracted much attention owing to their great potential as energy storage components in wearable electronics. However, fabrication of a high-performance, fully printed, and ultraflexible supercapacitor based on a single textile still remains a great challenge. Herein, a facile, low-cost, and textile-compatible method involving screen printing and transfer printing is developed to construct all-solid-state supercapacitors on a single silk fabric. The system exhibits a high specific capacitance of 19.23 mF cm-2 at a current density of 1 mA cm-2 and excellent cycling stability with capacitance retention of 84% after 2000 charging/discharging cycles. In addition, the device possesses superior mechanical stability with stable performance and structures after 100 times of bending and twisting. A butterfly-patterned supercapacitor was manufactured to demonstrate the compatibility of the printing approaches to textile aesthetics. This work may provide a facile and versatile approach for fabricating rationally designed ultraflexible textile-based power-storage elements for potential applications in smart textiles and stretchable/flexible electronics.