An Ultrastretchable and Highly Conductive Hydrogel Electrolyte for All-in-One Flexible Supercapacitor With Extreme Tensile Resistance

Abstract

Stretchability is a crucial property of flexible all-in-one supercapacitors. This work reports a novel hydrogel electrolyte, polyacrylamide-divinylbenzene-Li₂SO₄ (PAM-DVB-Li) synthesized by using a strategy of combining hydrophobic nodes and hydrophilic networks as well as a method of dispersing hydrophobic DVB crosslinker to acrylamide monomer/Li₂SO₄ aqueous solution by micelles and followed γ-radiation induced polymerization and crosslinking. The resultant PAM-DVB-Li hydrogel electrolyte possesses excellent mechanical properties with 5627 ± 241% stretchability and high ionic conductivity of 53 ± 3 mS cm⁻¹. By in situ polymerization of conducting polyaniline (PANI) on the PAM-DVB-Li hydrogel electrolyte, a novel all-in-one supercapacitor, PAM-DVB-Li/PANI, with highly integrated structure is prepared further. Benefiting from the excellent properties of hydrogel electrolyte and the all-in-one structure, the device exhibits a high specific capacitance of 469 mF cm⁻² at 0.5 mA cm⁻², good cyclic stability, safety, and deformation damage resistance. More importantly, the device demonstrates a superior tensile resistance (working normally under no more than 300% strain, capacitance stability in 1000 cycles of 1000% stretching and 10 cycles of 3000% stretching) far beyond that of other all-in-one supercapacitors. This work proposes a novel strategy to construct tensile-resistant all-in-one flexible supercapacitors that can be used as an energy storage device for stretchable electronic devices.