Sustainable Materials for Electrochemcial Capacitors

17Polymer Inks for Printable Supercapacitors

Yurui Liu¹, Yijie Zhou¹ and Yanfei Xu^1,2*

¹Mechanical & Industrial Engineering Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

²Chemical Engineering Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

Abstract

Printable polymer-based supercapacitors have raised attention, thanks to their unique characteristics such as lightweight, easy processing integration, high scalability, high discharge and charge rate, high energy, and high power density, to name a few. In this chapter, we review recent progress in the developments of polymer-based inks for printable supercapacitor electrodes. We highlight the design principles of polymer ink formulations. We show several selected examples for printed supercapacitors with high performance. We believe that functional polymer inks will play key roles in achieving next-generation printed supercapacitor with outstanding performance.

Keywords: Printable supercapacitors, polymer inks, electrical double-layer capacitors, pseudocapacitors, printing technology

17.1 Introduction

The contemporary development trends towards printable modern devices have raised the need for printable and rechargeable power sources [1]. The next-generation of supercapacitors with thin, lightweight, cheap, and flexible characteristics are highly desired for wearable electronics [2, 3]. Moreover, the “printed electronics”, such as printable photovoltaic devices, [4] transistors, [5] and organic light-emitting ...