The standard appearance of today's electronic devices as solid, black objects could one day change completely as researchers make electronic components that are transparent and flexible. Working toward this goal, researchers in a new study have developed transparent, flexible supercapacitors made of carbon nanotube films. The high-performance devices could one day be used to store energy for everything from wearable electronics to photovoltaics.
Ref: Transparent and flexible high-performance supercapacitors based on single-walled carbon nanotube films. Nanotechnology (28 April 2016) | DOI: 10.1088/0957-4484/27/23/235403
ABSTRACT
Transparent and flexible energy storage devices have garnered great interest due to their suitability for display, sensor and photovoltaic applications. In this paper, we report the application of aerosol synthesized and dry deposited single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) thin films as electrodes for an electrochemical double-layer capacitor (EDLC). SWCNT films exhibit extremely large specific capacitance (178 F g−1 or 552 μF cm−2), high optical transparency (92%) and stability for 10 000 charge/discharge cycles. A transparent and flexible EDLC prototype is constructed with a polyethylene casing and a gel electrolyte.