Lightweight flexible solid-state supercapacitor based on graphene/non-woven fabric electrode

Abstract

Flexible and lightweight supercapacitors with high safety and fast charging/discharging behavior are ideal power supplies for wearable and portable electronic devices. One of the bottlenecks in this field is to develop high-performance devices with economical materials and applicable fabrication technologies. Here we report an inexpensive, highly flexible, solid-state supercapacitor with graphene coated non-woven fabric (N-rGO) as the collector, electrodeposited Ni/Fe2O3 and polypyrrole (PPY) as the negative and positive materials, respectively. The flexible supercapacitor (FSC) presents a remarkable areal capacitance of 316.2 mF cm−2 with Na2SO4/polyvinyl alcohol gel electrolyte, which delivers an outstanding energy density as high as 43.2 μWh cm−2 at a power density of 0.5 mW cm−2. Furthermore, the device demonstrates excellent electrochemical integrity by well maintaining its capacitance in the cases of cyclic operation and mechanical bending. This research provides a rational design strategy for the facile fabrication of highly flexible, lightweight and low-cost flexible supercapacitors.