Wearable electronics need the execution of electronic functions, especially on a flexible and wearable sheet substrate. In this regard, cotton textiles are widely considered as environmentally friendly and natural fiber materials, including for soft and breathable clothing. Previously, conductive cotton-based textiles were successfully fabricated through different methods, and the surface sheet resistance was found to be <15 Ω, which shows effective electrical conductivity. Nevertheless, they still need to improve mainly because of the poor electrical conductivity. In this work, conductive cotton textile electrodes with superior bending ability are judiciously fabricated by mixing conductive silver (Ag) powder into a textile ink with various carbon sources such as activated carbon (AC), graphene, and carbon nanotubes (CNTs), which can work as flexible supercapacitor electrodes. Among the three different carbon materials, the AC-based conductive cotton electrodes exhibit superior electrochemical performance in alkaline electrolyte (6 M potassium hydroxide (KOH)). The results of cyclic voltammetry (CV) reveal that areal specific capacitances as high as 3288 and 2695 mF/cm 2 were achieved at scan rates of 5 and 10 mV/s, respectively, for the appropriate proportion of 0.3 g of Ag with 0.15 g of AC (0.3 Ag−AC-0.15). It also exhibits excellent cyclic stability with a high capacitance retention of ∼130% for over 10 000 cycles. Moreover, a symmetric flexible supercapacitor device was also successfully fabricated in the lab scale using a poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA)−KOH gel electrolyte system, demonstrating that noteworthy rate performance and flexibility can be achieved for the advanced flexible energy-storage devices.
The eco-friendly conductive cotton textile is promising alternatives for the flexible substrates in wearable devices since the cotton is as an inexpensive natural fabric material and compatible in modern portable electronics with adequate electrical conductivity. In this work, flexible conductive cotton-based electrodes are prepared via a screen-printing method using the carbonaceous nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene with an additional component of conductive silver (Ag) powder and textile ink. The prepared conductive cotton electrodes exhibit lower sheet resistance (<10 Ω) along with superior mass loading (20-30 mg.cm-2). On the basis of the performance of cotton electrodes prepared, an all-solid-state flexible supercapacitor device was successfully fabricated which exhibits a high specific areal capacitance of 677.12 mF.cm-2 at 0.0125 mA.cm-2 for a suitable electrode composition (60% of Ag and 40% CNTs) using a PVA-KOH gel electrolyte. The flexible device endures a stable electrochemical performance under severe mechanical deformation using different bending angles (0°, 30°, 45°, 60° and 90°) of the device and possesses excellent cyclic stability with the capacitance retention of ~80% even after 3000 CV cycles.
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