Facile ion-exchange synthesis of silver films as flexible current collectors for micro-supercapacitors

Abstract

A universal and facile methodology for highly flexible supercapacitors with silver current collectors fabricated by ion-exchange surface metallization has been developed. The supercapacitors show a high conductivity of 1.68 × 10⁵ S cm⁻¹ and high mechanical strength with more than 16 000 bending cycles. With multiple-walled carbon nanotubes as the electrode material, micro-supercapacitors (MSCs) with symmetric interdigitated electrodes were fabricated at room temperature. MSCs allow operations at high rates of more than 200 V s⁻¹, which is two orders of magnitude higher than that of conventional supercapacitors. With robust Ag current collectors, high cycling properties had been obtained, which have been verified by CV testing. MSCs can bear more than 15 000 cycling tests and can retain more than 97% of the original capacitance. The developed polymer metallization technique has a potential application to construct a whole electronic system on one chip.