Monolithically integrated micro-supercapacitors with high areal number density produced by surface adhesive-directed electrolyte assembly.

Wang, Sen; Zheng, Shuanghao; Shi, Xiaoyu; Das, Pratteek; Li, Linmei; Zhu, Yuanyuan; Lu, Yao; Feng, Xinliang et al. · Nat Commun · 2024

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Accurately placing very small amounts of electrolyte on tiny micro-supercapacitors (MSCs) arrays in close proximity is a major challenge. This difficulty hinders the development of densely-compact monolithically integrated MSCs (MIMSCs). To overcome this grand challenge, we demonstrate a controllable electrolyte directed assembly strategy for precise isolation of densely-packed MSCs at micron scale, achieving scalable production of MIMSCs with ultrahigh areal number density and output voltage. We fabricate a patterned adhesive surface across MIMSCs, that induce electrolyte directed assembly on 10,000 highly adhesive MSC regions, achieving a 100 µm-scale spatial separation between each electrolyte droplet within seconds. The resultant MIMSCs achieve an areal number density of 210 cells cm<sup>-2</sup> and a high areal voltage of 555 V cm<sup>-2</sup>. Further, cycling the MIMSCs at 190 V over 9000 times manifests no performance degradation. A seamlessly integrated system of ultracompact wirelessly-chargeable MIMSCs is also demonstrated to show its practicality and versatile applicability.