Issue 13, 2020

Highly compressible and superior low temperature tolerant supercapacitors based on dual chemically crosslinked PVA hydrogel electrolytes

Abstract

It remains a challenge for flexible supercapacitors to maintain high electrochemical performance under high compressive stress and subzero temperature conditions simultaneously. Here, a highly compressible and superior low temperature tolerant supercapacitor is fabricated comprising a designed dual chemically crosslinked PVA hydrogel electrolyte (DN + EG hydrogel) by incorporating an EG/H2O binary solvent. The synthesized DN + EG hydrogel displays a significant improvement of compressive stress compared to a single chemically crosslinked PVA hydrogel (25-fold) and a DN − EG hydrogel (5.3-fold), and also exhibits a high compressive stress (15.5 MPa), excellent shape recovery properties and a high ionic conductivity (0.48 S m−1) even at −40 °C. These impressive compressibility and anti-freezing properties benefit from the increased hydrogen bonding interactions between the first and second networks, and the solvent molecules and polymer chains. Remarkably, the fabricated supercapacitors show a high capacitance retention under strong compressive stress (nearly 100% retention) or after four thousand cycles of 180° bending (86.5% retention) at −30 °C, displaying prominent compression-resistant properties at subzero temperature. It is believed that this work paves a new way for developing high performance compression-resistant energy storage devices which are compatible with extremely cold environments.

Graphical abstract: Highly compressible and superior low temperature tolerant supercapacitors based on dual chemically crosslinked PVA hydrogel electrolytes

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
12 Nov 2019
Accepted
20 Jan 2020
First published
21 Jan 2020

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2020,8, 6219-6228

Highly compressible and superior low temperature tolerant supercapacitors based on dual chemically crosslinked PVA hydrogel electrolytes

Z. Liu, J. Zhang, J. Liu, Y. Long, L. Fang, Q. Wang and T. Liu, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2020, 8, 6219 DOI: 10.1039/C9TA12424A

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements