Increasing power and energy demand for next-generation portable and flexible electronics has stimulated intensive efforts to explore various electrochemically active materials for energy storage devices such as solid-state supercapacitors. Carbon cloth is an inexpensive and conductive textile with excellent mechanical flexibility and strength, which holds great promise as electrode material for flexible solid-state supercapacitors. Yet, the relatively low specific capacitance (1-2 F/g) of carbon cloth limits its application for charge storage, and thus, they rather be used as support for loading other electrochemically active materials.            Here, we report an effective strategy to activate carbon cloth for charge storage via chemical exfoliation followed by a two-step reduction process in hydrazine and ammonia. Significantly, the activated carbon cloth showed a maximum areal capacitance of 88 mF/cm2 without loading any other active capacitive materials. The enhanced capacitance was attributed to the increased surface area as a result of formation of exfoliated carbon fibers. More importantly, it exhibited a remarkable charge/discharge rate capability, retaining 76 % of capacitance when the charging rate increased from 10 mV/s to 1000 mV/s. A symmetric solid-state supercapacitor device composed of activated carbon cloth electrodes yielded an areal capacitance of 15.3 mF/cm2 at an ultrafast charging rate of 10000 mV/s. The capability of retaining high specific capacitance during ultrafast charging/discharging is critical for high-performance supercapacitor devices.

Solid-state supercapacitor based on activated carbon cloths exhibits excellent rate capability

248th National Meeting (2014)

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