Issue 19, 2017

From natural cotton thread to sewable energy dense supercapacitors

Abstract

Considering cost and flexibility, cotton thread is an ideal material for the fabrication of wearable and portable electronics. However, the capacitance of cotton thread based supercapacitors remains extremely low (below 50 mF cm−2) due to the insufficient capacitive utilization of active materials. In this work, ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC) membranes are rationally coupled with chemical vapour deposition derived graphene (CVD gr), to form a highly conductive carbon coating around cotton yarn. In this material design, OMC membranes act as hydrophilic nanoporous “ion reservoirs” to accumulate sufficient cations from a gel electrolyte, while CVD gr endows the composite thread low liner resistance (3.7 Ω cm−1) and high mechanical strength. Using a butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride modified gel as an ionic conducting electrolyte, the efficiency in capacitive utilization of coated MnO2 microparticles has been doubled, delivering an areal capacitance of 1.1 F cm2 with a volumetric energy of 2.7 mWh cm−3. Such a supercapacitor thread is lightweight, sewable and durable in bending fatigue tests, and can be fabricated through a facile dip-coating method. Impressively, this device can power a photodetector based on TiO2 nanowires without applying any external bias voltage, which opens up a new opportunity for development of wearable and self-powered nanodevices in the near future.

Graphical abstract: From natural cotton thread to sewable energy dense supercapacitors

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
23 Jan 2017
Accepted
10 Apr 2017
First published
12 Apr 2017

Nanoscale, 2017,9, 6406-6416

From natural cotton thread to sewable energy dense supercapacitors

J. Zhi, O. Reiser, Y. Wang and A. Hu, Nanoscale, 2017, 9, 6406 DOI: 10.1039/C7NR00555E

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements