Phase-Inverted Copolymer Membrane for the Enhancement of Textile Supercapacitors

This paper presents a universal fabrication process for single-layer textile supercapacitors, independent of textile properties such as weave pattern, thickness and material. To achieve this, an engineered copolymer membrane was fabricated within these textiles with an automated screen printing, phase inversion and vacuum curing process. This membrane, together with the textile yarns, acts as a porous, flexible and mechanically durable separator. This process was applied to four textiles, including polyester, two polyester-cottons and silk. Carbon-based electrodes were subsequently deposited onto both sides of the textile to form the textile supercapacitors. These supercapacitors achieved a range of areal capacitances between 3.12 and 38.2 mF·cm^-2, with energy densities between 0.279 and 0.681 mWh·cm^-3 with average power densities of between 0.334 and 0.32 W·cm^-3. This novel membrane facilitates the use of thinner textiles for single-layered textile supercapacitors without significantly sacrificing electrochemical performance and will enable future high energy density textile energy storage, from supercapacitors to batteries.