A scalable strategy for carbon derived from complex six-membered ring-like tannin on glass fiber for 1D/2D flexible all solid state supercapacitors

Abstract

Carbon materials have attracted increasing attention and have been used as extraordinary electrodes for high-performance supercapacitors (SCs) to satisfy the demand for energy reservation and transformation due to their fast current response and excellent cycling stability. Herein, we provided a novel approach to prepare 2D flexible electrode which was composed of glass fabric coated with tannin derived carbon (GFTC). In this strategy, each glass fiber with outstanding mechanical flexibility in the center was served as support and the outer ultrathin carbon coating derived from tannin play the role of active material, forming the coaxial structure. Two pieces of as-prepared GFTC with the highest specific capacitance of 315.7 mF cm−2 were assembled into a 2D all-solid-state symmetric supercapacitor (ASSC) which possessed the largest energy density of 6.03 μWh cm−2 and the superior cycling stability with 93% capacitance retention after 10,000 cycles at 2 mA cm−2. Furthermore, the 2D ASSC realized practical application by coordinating with solar panels as a power supply. More importantly, this strategy can also be extended to prepare 1D flexible electrode by using glass yarn as support instead of glass fabric. The assembled 1D ASSC could be used as a wristband to be applied in wearable electronics. Thus, this work shows a new way to fabricate 1D/2D flexible electrodes and SCs with high performance for next-generation energy storage devices.