Three dimensional heteroatom-doped carbon composite film for flexible solid-state supercapacitors

• Published in: RSC advances Vol. 6; no. 6; pp. 4483 - 4489
• Main Authors: Zou, Ben-Xue, Gao, You, Liu, Bo, Yu, Yongpeng, Lu, Yanhua
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.01.2016
• Subjects: Capacitance; Carbon; Current density; Electrodes; Fibers; Polymer matrix composites; Silk; Supercapacitors
• ISSN: 2046-2069; 2046-2069
• DOI: 10.1039/c5ra20525e

Three dimensional (3D) heteroatom-doped active carbon as a flexible supercapacitor electrode is explored with a starting material of silkworm fibers and low molecular weight phenol resin composite. The silk fiber offers a 3D interconnected network and high content of oxygen and nitrogen functionalities, leading to a unique hierarchical structure and a high performance of the electrode. The combination of phenolic resin with silk fibers increases mechanical robustness and specific capacitance of the composite. The porous carbon composite electrode shows a high gravimetric specific capacitance of 239 F g −1 and areal specific capacitance of 637 mF cm −2 at a current density of 0.57 A g −1 . The flexible solid-state supercapacitor assembled with two electrodes in Na 2 SO 4 /PVA gel electrolyte exhibits an energy density of 17.2 W h kg −1 at a power density of 207 W kg −1 . The capacitance retention of 116% after 10 000 charge-discharge cycles over a voltage range of 1.6 V illustrates the excellent cyclic stability of the supercapacitors and indicates great potential applications for energy storage devices. Three dimensional (3D) heteroatom-doped active carbon as a flexible supercapacitor electrode is explored with a starting material of silkworm fibers and low molecular weight phenol resin composite.