Scalable fabrication of textile-based planar-structured supercapacitors with excellent capacitive performance

The researchers have been engaged in the development of textile-based high-performance flexible energy storage devices. The conventional fabrics are transformed into electrode composites by uniformly depositing polypyrrole (PPy) coating onto them using a simple interfacial solution polymerization method. The traditional textiles encompass cellulose fabrics such as cotton and ramie, protein fabrics like silk and wool, as well as chemical fiber fabric including polyester, polyamide, and acrylon. The PPy can be effectively coated onto the surface of cellulose fibers and penetrate into their interior, resulting in significantly higher loading capacity on cotton and ramie fabrics compared to other types of fibers. The two fabric electrodes (cotton@PPy and ramie@PPy) have better capacitive properties, especially the areal capacitance of ramie@PPy reaches 2836 mF cm−2. The PPy-coated fabric is precisely divided into standardized interdigital electrodes of consistent dimensions through the utilization of laser cutting techniques. The fabrication of a planar supercapacitor can be achieved through the straightforward assembly of two interdigital electrodes. The planar supercapacitor based on ramie@PPy shows a maximum energy density of 8.21 μWh cm−2 at power density of 0.20 mW cm−2. After undergoing 5000 cycles, the device demonstrates a remarkable ability to retain 90 % of its initial capacitance. The assembled supercapacitors exhibit exceptional flexibility and practicality, enabling power supply to electronic devices when connected in series. The fabric-based flexible supercapacitor can be easily mass-produced, making it a promising candidate for flexible energy storage devices.