Abstract
The ubiquity of wearables, coupled with the increasing demand for power, presents a unique opportunity for nanostructured fiber-based mobile energy storage systems. When designing wearable electronic textiles, there is a need for mechanically flexible, low-cost and light-weight components. To meet this demand, we have developed an all-in-one fiber supercapacitor with a total thickness of less than 100 μm using a novel facile coaxial wet-spinning approach followed by a fiber wrapping step. The formed triaxial fiber nanostructure consisted of an inner poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) core coated with an ionically conducting chitosan sheath, subsequently wrapped with a carbon nanotube (CNT) fiber. The resulting supercapacitor is highly flexible, delivers a maximum energy density 5.83 Wh kg−1 and an extremely high power of 1399 W kg−1 along with remarkable cyclic stability and specific capacitance. This asymmetric all-in-one fiber supercapacitor may pave the way to a future generation of wearable energy storage devices.
Highlights
Within the last couple of years, an expansive effort has begun for development of ultrathin portable and flexible electronic devices and their integration into various wearable systems which has motivated the exploration for appropriate energy supply [1,2,3,4,5,6].The incorporation of electronic components into common textile structures could facilitate free and easy access while allowing a number of smart functionalities such as sensing, actuating, energy storage or information processing [4,7]
PEDOT:polystyrene sulfonate acid (PSS) pellets were purchased from Agfa, Taiwan (Orgacon dry, Lot A6 0000 AC), and polyethylene glycol (PEG) with a molecular weight of 2000 g mol−1 was purchased from Fluka, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Viscosity is a key factor determining the selection of dopes for wet-spinning
Summary
Within the last couple of years, an expansive effort has begun for development of ultrathin portable and flexible electronic devices and their integration into various wearable systems which has motivated the exploration for appropriate energy supply [1,2,3,4,5,6]. In the past few decades, planar supercapacitors (SCs) have been extensively studied and used [9,10,11,12,13,14] mainly due to their exceptional electrical properties such as fast charge and discharge rates, high power density, safety and long lifetime [15,16] Apart from their light weight and flexibility, they need further improvements of their energy storage and power delivery to enable use as wearable devices [17,18]. Among the most significant of these properties is water solubility and ease of use in wet-spinning which facilitated the fabrication of fiber SCs [32,33] Chitosan is a cationic polysaccharide derived from crustacean skeletons and has previously been used to form gels suitable for use as a solid electrolyte with an ionic conductivity of the order of 10−3 –10−4 Scm−1 [25,34].
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