A Wearable Supercapacitor Engaged with Gold Leaf Gilding Cloth Toward Enhanced Practicability

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Energy Storage
• Textile Engineering

Background:

• Wearable electronics require advanced flexible energy storage solutions.
• Current wearable supercapacitors (SCs) face limitations in comfort, productivity, and feasibility.
• A key challenge is the lack of suitable low-cost, conductive, and textile-compatible substrates/current collectors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a cost-effective and highly conductive flexible substrate for wearable electronics.
• To integrate this substrate into a functional electrode for wearable supercapacitors.
• To demonstrate the practical application of this technology in energy textiles.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing a traditional gilding technique to apply gold leaf to polyester cloth.
• Leveraging electrostatic interactions for intimate lamination of gold leaf onto charged cloth.
• Electrodepositing polypyrrole nanorods onto the gilded cloth to form an integrated electrode.

Main Results:

• Successfully created a cost-effective, conductive flexible substrate from gilded cloth.
• The resulting electrode exhibited excellent mechanical robustness against bending, cutting, and puncturing.
• The gilded cloth substrate enabled the fabrication of wearable SCs and energy textiles with improved safety and breathability.

Conclusions:

• Gilded cloth serves as an excellent, low-cost flexible substrate and current collector for wearable electronics.
• The developed integrated electrode demonstrates high mechanical stability and practical applicability.
• This approach offers a promising pathway for designing advanced wearable energy storage devices and textiles.