Cotton-textile-enabled flexible self-sustaining power packs via roll-to-roll fabrication.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27189776.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms11586 and PMC identifier 4873971.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
With rising energy concerns, efficient energy conversion and storage devices are required to provide a sustainable, green energy supply. Solar cells hold promise as energy conversion devices due to their utilization of readily accessible solar energy; however, the output of solar cells can be non-continuous and unstable. Therefore, it is necessary to combine solar cells with compatible energy storage devices to realize a stable power supply. To this end, supercapacitors, highly efficient energy storage devices, can be integrated with solar cells to mitigate the power fluctuations. Here, we report on the development of a solar cell-supercapacitor hybrid device as a solution to this energy requirement. A high-performance, cotton-textile-enabled asymmetric supercapacitor is integrated with a flexible solar cell via a scalable roll-to-roll manufacturing approach to fabricate a self-sustaining power pack, demonstrating its potential to continuously power future electronic devices.