Stretchable fiber-typed Supercapacitors based on Carbon Fiber Electrodes Decorated with Three-dimensional Carbon Nanotube Networks
KIM NARI (1), CHA HWAJIN (1), LEE WONOH (1), OH YOUNGSEOK (1)*
(1) KIMS - Changwon - Korea
Even though micro-carbon fibers (uCFs) have excellent mechanical, electrical performance as well as highly flexibility, their poor electrochemical performance is a hurdle for supercapacitor applications due to their intrinsic poor surface area to store electrochemical energy. In this study, highly porous single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) networks were decorated around uCFs to obtain large active area for electrical double layer capacitance. Also, carbonized polydopamine was coated around CNT-CNT junctions and CNT-uCF interface in order to maintain the mechanical and electrical stability of the hybridized structure. The fiber electrodes exhibited tremendous enhancement in areal capacitance (22.9 mF/cm2) in comparison to the pristine uCF electrodes (1.0 mF/cm2) without additional introduction of pseudocapactive materials such as transition metal and conducting polymers. Also we designed a novel and efficient stretchable fiber-typed supercapacitors by combination of the elastomeric polyurethane (PU) wires as the substrate and H2SO4-poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) gel as the solid electrolyte. The fiber typed supercapacitors show only 7.5 % reduction in the specific capacitance even under 100 % tensile strain. Furthermore, the capacitance retention still maintained at 94.0 % with the applied cyclic tensile strain from 0% to 50%, confirming that the fatigue resistance of the hybridized structures were so outstanding.