Highly Scalable Fabrication of Planar-Type Thermally Chargeable Supercapacitor Based on Graphene Oxide

Abstract

The development of efficient and sustainable energy sources has become important to power the rapidly growing portable electronic devices. Newly developed thermally chargeable supercapacitors that can be charged by heat energy including human body heat have great potential to become standalone power sources for wearable electronics. However, the complex fabrication process of electrodes and devices limits the cost-effectiveness and scalability for widespread application. Here we demonstrate highly scalable fabrication of planar-type thermally chargeable supercapacitor (pTCSC) by using one-step laser printing method on graphene oxide films with a general DVD burner. We utilized the Soret effect in graphene oxide (GO) films, producing a very high thermally induced voltage (9 mV/K) under a temperature gradient. With a temperature gradient of 10 K, pTCSC device achieved a thermally charged voltage of 58 mV and stored charge of 154 µC/cm2. Also, higher voltage is thermally charged by simply connecting the multiple devices in series. We believe that our scalable fabrication of pTCSC devices suggests a future direction of sustainable energy devices utilizing thermal energy.