High loading carbon nanotubes deposited onto porous nickel yarns by solution imbibition as flexible wire-shaped supercapacitor electrodes

Abstract

The deposition of active materials directly onto metal wires is a general strategy to prepare wire-shaped electrodes for flexible and wearable energy storage devices. However, it is still a critical challenge to coat active materials onto the aimed metal wires because of their smooth surface and small specific surface area. In this work, high porous nickel yarns (PNYs) was fabricated using commercial nylon yarns as templates through step-wise electroless plating, electroplating and calcination processes. The PNYs are composed of multiplied fibers with hollow tubular structure of 5–10µm in diameter, allowing the imbibition of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) solution by a facile capillary action process. The prepared CNTs/PNY electrodes showed a typical electrochemical double layer capacitive performance and the constructed all-solid flexible wire-shaped symmetric supercapacitors provided a specific capacitance of 4.67F/cm3 with good cycling stability at a current density of 0.6A/cm3.