The Application of a Y-Modified Lanthanum Zirconate Flexible Thin Film for a High-Performance Flexible Supercapacitor

With the rapid development of wearable electronics devices, there is increasing demand for the development of new flexible energy storage devices with high security, and this has become a hot research topic. Although flexible supercapacitors are considered to be high-performance energy-storage equipment because of their fast charging/discharging ability, long cycle life, good reliability, wide operating temperature range, and so on, there are still many drawbacks that need to be overcome. Herein, the La₂ Zr₂ O₇ (LZO) thin film is synthesized as a new energy-storage material by using a facile electrospinning method and calcination at low temperature. In addition, the mechanism of producing the flexibility of this film is determined by TG, IR, and XRD analyses. As previous studies have suggested that the charge storage of the LZO film can be attributed to the mechanism of oxygen intercalation, the Y element is doped into the LZO film to increase the concentration of oxygen vacancies. The changes in structural and electrochemical properties of La₂ Y_x Zr_2-x O₃ (0≤x≤0.5) nanofibers (LNF-x) with increasing Y content are studied carefully to obtain the best doping sample. The LNF-0.1 sample shows the highest areal capacitance of 605.3 mF cm^-2 at 2 mA cm^-2 , so a symmetrical flexible device is fabricated with LNF-0.1 electrodes. This device has a high energy density (76.7 μW h cm^-2 at 2 mW cm^-2 ), good cycling stability, and excellent mechanical flexibility. This study thus provides a new research trend for portable and wearable electronics.