Highly Stretchable & Transparent Supercapacitor based on Metal Nanowire Network Electrodes

Abstract

The upsurge in the use of portable electronics as well as diversification of consumer demands have been a strong driving force for development of innovative properties such as lightweight, flexibility and stretchability. In this regard, various energy storage or conversion devices on flexible substrate including batteries, solar-cells, fuel-cells and supercapacitors have been developed in order to maintain their performance under considerable physical disturbance such as bending, stretching and even twisting. Among those various energy storage devices, supercapacitor, owing to long cycle life with rapid charging and discharging capabilities at high power density, has become a most viable candidate to substitute conventional batteries. Actually, the researches related with the transparent, flexible and stretchable supercapacitors have been widely studied and focused in the carbon-based materials such as graphene and CNT. However, little research has been done on metal nanomaterials that are emerging as transparent, flexible, stretchable electrode materials. In this proposal, we have studied the fabrication process of the next generation transparent, flexible and stretchable supercapacitor based on the metal nanomaterials. As a first step, we show that the efficiency of the flexible electrode manufacturing process can be increased by combining the roll-to-roll printing process and the laser sintering process. Furthermore, we develop a transparent and flexible electrode fabrication process using Ag nanowire network structure and establish a core shell nanowire synthesis process that can greatly improve electrochemical stability of the NW, confirming the possibilities of nanowire network-based electrode for the next-generation supercapacitor.