“Additive fabrication of fully-integrated high-performance millimeter-scale microsupercapacitors : Fine-tuning chemistry to maximize performance’’
Authors : Amin Hodaei, Vivek Subramanian
Journal : Journal of Power Sources
Editor : ELSEVIER
Year of publication : 2023
Microsupercapacitors (MSCs) are attractive for use as energy devices to power wearables, IoT, and other small microsystems. Additive fabrication of these devices will facilitate easy integration into a range of ubiquitous microsystem platforms. In this work, MSCs with lateral sizes < 0.5 cm2 (full package: 7 mm × 7 mm and charge storage active area: 4 mm × 3.5 mm) and total height of ∼2 mm with remarkable electrochemical performance are fully 3D printed via a combination of FDM printing and 3D extrusion-based printing. By fine-tuning the chemistries of the components of the MSCs, a combination of high energy density of 16.1 μWh.cm−2, power density of ∼3028 mW.cm−2, areal capacitance of ∼323 mF.cm−2, and ∼91.3% capacitance retention after 21000 cycles are realized. These performance levels are achieved using novel inks for the electrodes, electrolytes, and current collectors in addition to provision of proper packaging and encapsulation of the devices. The demonstrated performance of these encapsulated millimeter-scale fully additively fabricated MSCs with thick electrodes (i.e., ∼300 μm) thus makes them attractive for use as integrated energy sources for powering microsystems, wearables, and IoT.