Jue Deng

A Highly Stretchable, Fiber-Shaped Supercapacitor†

Flexible and portable devices are a mainstream direction in modern electronics and related multidisciplinary fields. To this end, they are generally required to be stretchable to satisfy various substrates. As a result, stretchable devices, such as electrochemical supercapacitors, lithium-ion batteries, organic solar cells, organic light-emitting diodes, field-effect transistors, and artificial skin sensors have been widely studied. However, these stretchable devices are made in a conventional planar format that has largely hindered their development. For the portable applications, the devices need to be lightweight and small, though it is difficult for them to be made into efficient microdevices. In particular, it is challenging or even impossible for them to be used in electronic circuits and textiles that are urgently required also in a wide variety of other fields, such as microelectronic applications. Recently, some attempts have been made to fabricate wire-shaped microdevices, such as electrochemical supercapacitors. They have been generally produced by twisting two fiber electrodes with electrolytes coated on the surface. Several examples have been also successfully shown to make fiber-shaped supercapacitors with a coaxial structure. Compared with their planar counterparts, the wire or fiber shape enables promising advantages such as being lightweight and woven into textiles. Although the wire and fiber-shaped supercapacitors are also flexible with high electrochemical performance, they are not stretchable, which is critically important for many applications. For instance, the resulting electronic textiles could easily break during the use if they were not stretchable. To the best of our knowledge, herein we have, for the first time, developed a novel family of highly stretchable, fibershaped high-performance supercapacitors. Aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) sheets that are sequentially wrapped on an elastic fiber serve as two electrodes. The use of aligned CNT sheets offers combined remarkable properties including high flexibility, tensile strength, electrical conductivity, and mechanical and thermal stability. As a result, the fibershaped supercapacitor maintains a high specific capacitance of approximately 18 F/g after stretch by 75% for 100 cycles. Spinnable CNT arrays were first synthesized by chemical vapor deposition. A scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image of the array with height of 230 mm is shown in the Supporting Information, Figure S1, and the CNT shows a multi-walled structure with diameter of about 10 nm (Supporting Information, Figure S2). Aligned CNT sheets could be then continuously drawn from the array and easily attached to various substrates. Elastic fibers were used herein to offer the stretchability in the resulting supercapactiors, and rubber fibers have been mainly studied as a demonstration. For a typical fabrication on the fiber-shaped supercapacitor (Figure 1), a rubber fiber was first coated with a thin layer of

Novel Graphene/Carbon Nanotube Composite Fibers for Efficient Wire‐Shaped Miniature Energy Devices

Novel nanostructured composite fibers based on graphene and carbon nanotubes are developed with high tensile strength, electrical conductivity, and electrocatalytic activity. As two application demonstrations, these composite fibers are used to fabricate flexible, wire-shaped dye-sensitized solar cells and electrochemical supercapacitors, both with high performances, for example, a maximal energy conversion efficiency of 8.50% and a specific capacitance of ca. 31.50 F g(-1). These miniature wire-shaped devices are further shown to be promising for flexible and portable electronic facilities.

Cross‐Stacking Aligned Carbon‐Nanotube Films to Tune Microwave Absorption Frequencies and Increase Absorption Intensities

Aligned carbon-nanotube (CNT) sheets are used as building blocks to prepare light-weight, frequency-tunable and high-performance microwave absorbers, and the absorption frequency can be accurately controlled by stacking them with different intersectional angles. A remarkable reflection loss of -47.66 dB is achieved by stacking four aligned CNT sheets with an intersectional angle of 90° between two neighboring ones. The incorporation of a second phase such as a metal and a conducting polymer greatly enhances the microwave-absorption capability.

Twisted Aligned Carbon Nanotube/Silicon Composite Fiber Anode for Flexible Wire‐Shaped Lithium‐Ion Battery

Twisted, aligned carbon nanotube/silicon composite fibers with remarkable mechanical and electronic properties are designed to develop novel flexible lithium-ion batteries with a high cyclic stability. The core-sheath architecture and the aligned structure of the composite nanotube offer excellent combined properties.

Electrochromic Fiber‐Shaped Supercapacitors

An electrochromic fiber-shaped super-capacitor is developed by winding aligned carbon nanotube/polyaniline composite sheets on an elastic fiber. The fiber-shaped supercapacitors demonstrate rapid and reversible chromatic transitions under different working states, which can be directly observed by the naked eye. They are also stretchable and flexible, and are woven into textiles to display designed signals in addition to storing energy.

Integrating Perovskite Solar Cells into a Flexible Fiber

Perovskite solar cells have triggered a rapid development of new photovoltaic devices because of high energy conversion efficiencies and their all-solid-state structures. To this end, they are particularly useful for various wearable and portable electronic devices. Perovskite solar cells with a flexible fiber structure were now prepared for the first time by continuously winding an aligned multiwalled carbon nanotube sheet electrode onto a fiber electrode; photoactive perovskite materials were incorporated in between them through a solution process. The fiber-shaped perovskite solar cell exhibits an energy conversion efficiency of 3.3%, which remained stable on bending. The perovskite solar cell fibers may be woven into electronic textiles for large-scale application by well-developed textile technologies.

Superelastic Supercapacitors with High Performances during Stretching

A fiber-shaped supercapacitor that can be stretched over 400% is developed by using two aligned carbon nanotube/polyaniline composite sheets as electrodes. A high specific capacitance of approximately 79.4 F g(-1) is well maintained after stretching at a strain of 300% for 5000 cycles or 100.8 F g(-1) after bending for 5000 cycles at a current density of 1 A g(-1). In particular, the high specific capacitance is maintained by 95.8% at a stretching speed as high as 30 mm s(-1).

Smart, Stretchable Supercapacitors

Smart supercapacitors are developed by depositing conducting polymers onto aligned carbon-nanotube sheets. These supercapacitors rapidly and reversibly demonstrate color changes in response to a variation in the level of stored energy and the chromatic transitions can be directly observed by the naked eye.

Stretchable, Wearable Dye‐Sensitized Solar Cells

A stretchable, wearable dye-sensitized solar-cell textile is developed from elastic, electrically conducting fiber as a counter electrode and spring-like titanium wire as the working electrode. Dyesensitized solar cells are demonstrated with energy-conversion efficiencies up to 7.13%. The high energy-conversion efficiencies can be well maintained under stretch by 30% and after stretch for 20 cycles.

Self-Healable Electrically Conducting Wires for Wearable Microelectronics†

Electrically conducting wires play a critical role in the advancement of modern electronics and in particular are an important key to the development of next-generation wearable microelectronics. However, the thin conducting wires can easily break during use, and the whole device fails to function as a result. Herein, a new family of high-performance conducting wires that can self-heal after breaking has been developed by wrapping sheets of aligned carbon nanotubes around polymer fibers. The aligned carbon nanotubes offer an effective strategy for the self-healing of the electric conductivity, whereas the polymer fiber recovers its mechanical strength. A self-healable wire-shaped supercapacitor fabricated from a wire electrode of this type maintained a high capacitance after breaking and self-healing.