Highly Oriented Carbon Nanotube Supercapacitors

The demand for supercapacitors (SCs) with high capacitance, high charge-discharge rate, and long lifespan has been increasing because of the rapid development of wearable devices. In particular, flexible and durable SCs are essential for applications in wearable devices. A reasonable strategy to achieve such SCs involves the design and fabrication of SCs with flexible materials. In this study, we present a flexible SC with highly oriented carbon nanotube (CNT) sheets, which exhibit all the component functions of SCs: activated materials, conductive materials, and current collectors. Repeated bending tests validated the robustness of the flexible SCs. The SCs demonstrated extremely high durability with >99.9% capacitance retention after 50 000 bending cycles. Furthermore, we observed that the orientation angle of the CNT sheets with respect to the current flow direction (theta) was crucial for determining the performance of SCs. The SCs with CNT sheets oriented in the current flow direction (theta = 0 degrees) showed a higher scan rate and robustness than those with other CNT sheet orientations (theta = 45 or 90 degrees), because of the ease of access of charge carriers to the electrodes of the entire CNT sheet. Well-designed flexible and durable CNT-SCs can drastically improve the performance of future flexible devices.

Automated summary

This study presents a flexible supercapacitor with highly oriented carbon nanotube sheets, demonstrating high durability and over 99.9% capacitance retention after 50,000 bending cycles. The orientation angle of the carbon nanotube sheets with respect to the current flow direction was found to be crucial in determining the performance of the supercapacitors, with sheets oriented in the current flow direction showing higher scan rate and robustness. Well-designed flexible and durable carbon nanotube supercapacitors have the potential to greatly enhance the performance of future flexible devices.