Natural Cellulose Fiber as Substrate for Supercapacitor

Cellulose fibers with porous structure and electrolyte absorption properties are considered to be a good potential substrate for the deposition of energy material for energy storage devices. Unlike traditional substrates, such as gold or stainless steel, paper prepared from cellulose fibers in this study not only functions as a substrate with large surface area but also acts as an interior electrolyte reservoir, where electrolyte can be absorbed much in the cellulose fibers and is ready to diffuse into an energy storage material. We demonstrated the value of this internal electrolyte reservoir by comparing a series of hierarchical hybrid supercapacitor electrodes based on homemade cellulose paper or polyester textile integrated with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by simple solution dip and electrodeposited with MnO2. Atomic layer deposition of Al2O3 onto the fiber surface was used to limit electrolyte absorption into the fibers for comparison. Configurations designed with different numbers of ion diffusion pathways were compared to show that cellulose fibers in paper can act as a good interior electrolyte reservoir and provide an effective pathway for ion transport facilitation. Further optimization using an additional CNT coating resulted in an electrode of paper/CNTs/MnO2/CNTs, which has dual ion diffusion and electron transfer pathways and demonstrated superior supercapacitive performance. This paper highlights the merits of the mesoporous cellulose fibers as substrates for supercapacitor electrodes, in which the water-swelling effect of the cellulose fibers can absorb electrolyte, and the mesoporous internal structure of the fibers can provide channels for ions to diffuse to the electrochemical energy storage materials.