Recent advances in designing and fabrication of planar micro-supercapacitors for on-chip energy storage

Continuous development and miniaturization of electronic devices greatly stimulate the research for miniaturized energy storage devices. Supercapacitor, also called electrochemical capacitor or ultracapacitor, as one of the most promising emerging energy storage devices, is of great interest owing to its high power density, fast charge and discharge rates, and long cycle-lives. However, conventional supercapacitors are too large to be integrated with miniaturized electronic devices. Therefore, much research has been devoted to designing and fabricating high-performance miniaturized supercapacitors, also called micro-supercapacitors with typical device feature sizes in the range of centimeter or even millimeter that can be placed directly on a chip and integrated with other microelectronic devices for replacing or complementing thin film batteries or micro batteries for powering them. This paper briefly discusses main factors affecting the performance of microsupercapacitors and mainly focuses on the architectural consideration of a micro-supercapacitor. Latest advances in the designing and fabrication of planar micro-supercapacitors for on-chip energy storage and related electrode materials are highlighted. Moreover, prospects and challenges in this field are discussed that are critical for further development of high-performance micro-supercapacitors. (C) 2015 Elsevier By. All rights reserved.