Spatial-Interleaving Graphene Supercapacitor with High Area Energy Density and Mechanical Flexibility.
Lifeng WangHouze YaoFengyao ChiJianfeng YanHuhu ChengYan LiLan JiangLiang-Ti QuPublished in: ACS nano (2022)
The booming portable electronics market has raised huge demands for the development of supercapacitors with mechanical flexibility and high power density in the finite area; however, this is still unsatisfied by the currently thickness-confined sandwich design or the in-plane interdigital configuration with limited mechanical features. Here, a spatial-interleaving supercapacitor (SI-SC) is first designed and constructed, in which the graphene microelectrodes are reversely stacked layer by layer within a three-dimensional (3D) space. Because each microelectrode matches well with four counter microelectrodes and all 3D spatial-interleaving microelectrodes have narrow interspaces that maintain the efficient ions transport in the whole device, this SI-SC has a prominent liner capacitance increase along with the device thickness. As a result, the high specific areal capacitance of 36.46 mF cm -2 and 5.34 μWh cm -2 energy density is achieved on the 100 μm thick device. Especially, the microelectrodes in each layer are interdigitated, ensuring the outstanding mechanical flexibility of SI-SC, with ∼98.7% performance retention after 10 4 cycles of bending tests, realizing the excellent integration of high area energy density and mechanical flexibility in the finite area. Furthermore, the SI-SC units can be easily integrated into wearable electronics to power wristwatches, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), calculators, and so on for practical applications.