The influence of textile substrate on the performance of multilayer fabric supercapacitors

This paper presents a study investigating the effect of differing textile substrates on the performance of multilayer, aqueous fabric supercapacitors. Three widely available textiles, cotton, polyester-cotton and silk were chosen, and all underwent the same activated carbon deposition process to form electrodes. An automated spray coating was implemented to precisely control the loading of the carbon, and to enable a uniform coating. A vacuum impregnation technique was utilized to increase the wettability of the electrodes and improve the absorption of the aqueous electrolyte. The multilayer supercapacitors showed excellent electrochemical and mechanical stability, with the choice of textile substrate found to have a profound effect on the performance. The silk-based supercapacitor was found to have a gravimetric capacitance of 20.2 F.g ⁻¹ (56.6 mF.cm ⁻² ) at a carbon loading ratio of 15.7 %wt. The polyester-cotton supercapacitor, however, was found to have a superior areal capacitance of 118 mF.cm ⁻² at a carbon loading ratio of 14.1 %wt. This work will be used to select future substrates and carbon loading levels for real-world e-textiles.