Highly deformable bi-continuous conducting polymer hydrogels for electrochemical energy storage

Abstract

Conducting polymer hydrogels with inherent flexibility, ionic conductivity and environment friendliness are promising materials in the fields of energy storage. However, a trade-off between mechanical and electrochemical properties has limited the development of flexible/stretchable conducting polymer hydrogel electrodes, owing to the intrinsic conflict among mechanical and electrical phases. Here, we report a reliable design to enable conducting polymer with both exceptional mechanical and electrical/electrochemical performance through the construction of bi-continuous conducting polymer crosslinked network. The resultant bi-continuous conducting polymer hydrogels (BCPH) demonstrate significantly improved mechanical and electrochemical properties compared to the conventional conducting polymer hydrogel (CPH) electrode. BCPH presents a high specific capacitance of 715 F g−1 at 0.5 A/g, a high mechanical strength (∼1 MPa) and a large stretchability (∼300%). Enabled by such intrinsically deformability and electrochemical properties, we further demonstrate its utility in flexible solid-state supercapacitor (FSSC), which exhibits an outstanding specific capacitance of 760 mF cm−2 at 2 mA cm−2, excellent electrochemical stability with 81% capacitance retention after 5000 charge/discharge cycles, and superior bending cycle stability. This simple and scalable strategy provides a platform for the fabrication of high-performance conducting hydrogel electrodes for various wearable electronic equipment.