High-performance supercapacitor carbon electrode fabricated by large-scale roll-to-roll micro-gravure printing

Supercapacitors have rapidly evolved into one of the important components in energy storage technology with the capability of storing and discharging energy very quickly and effectively. The fabrication of a high-performance supercapacitor carbon electrode via a large-scale printing process can accelerate its commercialization. Herein, a high-performance supercapacitor carbon electrode is processed via a micro-gravure roll-to-roll (R2R) printing technique, and the properties are optimized through web tension, printing speed and morphology control. The supercapacitor with carbon electrodes fabricated by R2R micro-gravure printing shows a capacitance of 151.15 F g−1 and equivalent series resistance (ESR) of 0.37 Ω, which are comparable to the carbon electrodes fabricated via conventional coating. Furthermore, the electrodes show highly promising performance in the application of solid-state supercapacitors, and the light-emitting diode working for nearly 30 s. The research demonstrates that the low-cost, large-scale R2R micro-gravure printing process can be used to produce high-quality electrodes for the supercapacitor, which will accelerate the development of a fully R2R micro-gravure printed supercapacitor and its commercialization.