Scalable Fabrication and Integration of Graphene Microsupercapacitors through Full Inkjet Printing

Abstract

A simple full-inkjet-printing technique is developed for the scalable fabrication of graphene-based microsupercapacitors (MSCs) on various substrates. High-performance graphene inks are formulated by integrating the electrochemically exfoliated graphene with a solvent exchange technique to reliably print graphene interdigitated electrodes with tunable geometry and thickness. Along with the printed polyelectrolyte, poly(4-styrenesulfonic acid), the fully printed graphene-based MSCs attain the highest areal capacitance of ∼0.7 mF/cm, substantially advancing the state-of-art of all-solid-state MSCs with printed graphene electrodes. The full printing solution enables scalable fabrication of MSCs and effective connection of them in parallel and/or in series at various scales. Remarkably, more than 100 devices have been connected to form large-scale MSC arrays as power banks on both silicon wafers and Kapton. Without any extra protection or encapsulation, the MSC arrays can be reliably charged up to 12 V and retain the performance even 8 months after fabrication.

Emerging 2D Materials Produced via Electrochemistry

“…For example, inkjet printing of concentrated EG inks (2.3 mg mL −1 , in a mixture of cyclohexanone and terpineol) allowed for the scalable fabrication of MSCs arrays on arbitrary substrates. Especially, the efficient integration of flexible in‐plane MSCs achieved an areal capacitance of ≈0.7 mF cm −2 . On the other hand, the incorporation of EG with pseudocapacitive materials, in the form of layer‐stacked heterostructures or hybrid films, led to a significant improvement of the device performances .…”

Advances on three‐dimensional electrodes for micro‐supercapacitors: A mini‐review

“…Particularly, the in‐plane electrodes configuration not only eliminates the separator and thus significantly reducing the size of MSC unit, but also narrows interspace between positive and negative electrodes to shorten the ionic diffusion distance . Moreover, its intriguing features of straightforward integratability, outstanding mechanical flexibility, good scalability, and ingenious deployments as well as precise tunability of electrodes pattern enable it to gain much popularity recently …”

Water‐Soluble Hybrid Graphene Ink for Gravure‐Printed Planar Supercapacitors

“…[13] This undesirable phenomenon significantly prevents the access of PVA-based gel electrolyte ions into the interplanar space, resulting in limited ion accessible surface area of graphene and sluggish ion transport kinetics so that there are lots of "dead surfaces" of graphene without contribution to the energy storage. [13] This undesirable phenomenon significantly prevents the access of PVA-based gel electrolyte ions into the interplanar space, resulting in limited ion accessible surface area of graphene and sluggish ion transport kinetics so that there are lots of "dead surfaces" of graphene without contribution to the energy storage.…”

“…[14] Meanwhile, Gao et al directly used another laser writing to reduce graphene oxide (GO) paper and readily obtained a number of configurations for the RGO-based planar supercapacitors with an areal capacitance of 0.59 mF cm −2 . [17][18][19] For example, Li et al, [13] Wang et al, [18] and Liu et al [6] developed the full-inkjet-printing and screen printing for graphene-based planar supercapacitors. [16] Although promising areal capacitances of graphene-based planar supercapacitors with fewer graphene agglomerations have been achieved by these microfabrication technologies, the global depositions of graphene material are usually required and patterned into interdigitated structures via etching or laser scribing, resulting in the complicated processing and wasting more graphene material.…”

“…[17][18][19] For example, Li et al, [13] Wang et al, [18] and Liu et al [6] developed the full-inkjet-printing and screen printing for graphene-based planar supercapacitors. As a powerful and cost efficient direct patterning method, printing technology attracts significant interest in graphene-based planar supercapacitors due to its simple processing and few material waste.…”