Air-Stable Conductive Polymer Ink for Printed Wearable Micro-Supercapacitors

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Electrochemistry
• Energy Storage

Background:

• Printed electronics require stable and affordable electrode inks for wearable devices.
• Polyaniline's weak hydrophilicity has limited its use in conductive inks.
• Developing scalable energy solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT) is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To overcome polyaniline's hydrophilicity and create a stable, low-cost conducting polymer ink.
• To fabricate high-performance wearable micro-supercapacitors (MSCs) using the developed ink.
• To demonstrate a cost-effective and environmentally friendly energy solution for distributed electronics.

Main Methods:

• A facile assemble-disperse strategy was employed to modify polyaniline.
• The modified polyaniline was formulated into an additive-free conducting polymer ink.
• Wearable micro-supercapacitors were fabricated using spray-coating with the developed ink.

Main Results:

• The conducting polymer ink exhibited high conductivity (10^-2 S cm^-1) and specific capacitance (386.9 F g^-1).
• Printed MSCs achieved high areal capacitance (96.6 mF cm^-2) and volumetric capacitance (26.0 F cm^-3).
• The performance of the fabricated MSCs surpassed most state-of-the-art conducting polymer-based supercapacitors.

Conclusions:

• The developed polyaniline-based ink offers a scalable and stable solution for printed electronics.
• Spray-coated wearable micro-supercapacitors demonstrate significant potential for next-generation distributed energy systems.
• This work provides a cost-effective and sustainable approach for pervasive energy solutions in IoT applications.