Silver nanowire-based current collector for bifunctional flexible electrochromic supercapacitors

Abstract

Supercapacitors, are widely used in electric vehicle, intelligent power meter field, tax printer, etc. Recently, with the rapid development of flexible electronics, flexible supercapacitor has been considered as one of the most promising energy suppliers for the smart wearable products. There is an apparent need of the device with dual or mulitifunctionalities, for example, the flexible bifuncional electrochromic energy storage device. PEDOT:PSS, as a conducting polymer, has excellent theoretical capacitance, electrochromic performance and mechanical flexibility, which showed great potential in flexible electrochromic supercapacitor filed. Herein, we coated PEDOT:PSS layer onto silver nanowires (Ag NWs) transparent electrode by facile spinning method to fabricate flexible electrochromic energy-storage electrode. And a symmetrical primary flexible electrochromic supercapacitor prototype was assembled utilizing two pieces of Ag NWs-PEDOT:PSS electrode. The symmetrical electrochromic supercapacitor exhibited an areal capacitance of 0.388 mF/cm ² (current density: 20 μA/cm ² ). Moreover, with the applied voltage increased, the colour significantly changed from transparent to light blue. These results indicated their application potential in the emerging multifunction electronics.