Highly flexible and transparent solid-state supercapacitors based on RuO2/PEDOT:PSS conductive ultrathin films

Transparent, conductive electrodes are important in many applications such as touch screens, displays and solar cells. Transparent energy storage systems will require materials that can simultaneously act as current collectors and active storage media. This is challenging as it means improving the energy storage capability of conducting materials while retaining transparency. Here, we have used aerosol-jet spraying strategy to prepare transparent supercapacitor electrodes from ruthenium oxide/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene): poly(styrene-4-sulfonate), (RuO2/PEDOT: PSS) hybrid thin films. These films combine excellent transparency with reasonably high conductivity (DC conductivity =279 S/cm) and excellent volumetric capacitance (CV =190 F/cm3). We demonstrate electrodes with historical high transparency of 93% which display an areal capacitance of C/A=1.2 mF/cm2, significantly higher than the rest reported electrodes with comparable transparency. We have assembled flexible, transparent, solid-state symmetric devices which exhibit T=80% and C/A=0.84 mF/cm2 and are stable over 10,000 charge/discharge cycles. Asymmetric solid-state device with RuO2/PEDOT: PSS and PEDOT: PSS thin films as positive and negative electrodes, respectively, display an areal capacitances of 1.06 mF/cm2, a maximum power density (P/A) of 147 μW/cm2 and an energy density (E/A) of 0.053 μWh/cm2. Furthermore, large area transparent solid-state supercapacitor device has been built. We believe the solution-processed transparent films could be easily scaled-up to meet the industrial demands.