Universal Nature-Inspired and Amine-Promoted Metallization for Flexible Electronics and Supercapacitors

Economical and abundant natural biological materials provide a low-cost and scalable approach to develop next-generation flexible and wearable electronics. Herein, a universal strategy of nature-inspired and amine-promoted metallization, namely, NIAPM, is presented to make high quality metals for electronics fabrication. The introduction of poly(ethyleneimine) (PEI) significantly shortens the time of metallization from >48 h to approximate to 6 h, and the phenol compounds (TP) from green tea make metals bond tightly on all demonstrated surfaces. The as-made thin metal films of Cu and Ni feature high conductivity (similar to 1.0 Omega/square), excellent mechanical stability and flexibility even at the bending radius of similar to 1 mm. Moreover, NIAPM is compatible with typical lithography techniques for fabricating metallic patterns, showing considerable potential applications in flexible electronics. As a proof-of-concept, two devices based on melamine-templated Cu sponges are first prepared for detecting the change of external pressure with a resistance sensitivity of 18.1 kPa(-1) and collecting high-viscosity crude oil, respectively. Then, a high-performance bendable solid supercapacitor is demonstrated using as-prepared Ni metallized fabrics and the activated porous carbon from the recycled waste in NIPAM as flexible electrodes, which possesses comparable areal capacitance of 45.5 F.g(-1), and energy density of 7.88 Wh.g(-1) at the power density of 35 W.g(-1). Therefore, it is anticipated that such a time-saving, cost-effective and whole solution-processed NIAPM strategy can inspire further practical applications in the fields of surface chemistry, material science, flexible and wearable electronics, etc.