Abstract

This paper reports on the development of three pieces of supercapacitor cells for portable applications such as mobile and wearable energy storage. In a primary embodiment, the three developed supercapacitors cells, each, consist of two flexible electrodes fabricated on thin metal base substrates. The electrode, mainly a commercially prepared multiwalled hydroxyl carbon nanotubes (CPHMWCNTs), sandwich a hybrid solid polymeric separator doped with an appropriate ionic material acting as an electrolyte. The integrated separator and electrolyte layer was made of filter paper, a polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) doped with phosphoric acid at three different concentrations. The Three cells were then assembled and leveled as cell-A (C90PVdF-HFP10 |H50| C90PVdF-HFP10), cell-B (C90PVdF-HFP10 |H60| C90PVdF-HFP10) and cell-C (C90PVdF-HFP10 |H70| C90PVdF-HFP10). The evaluations of these three different electrodes and their substrate materials allowed for selection of a combination of active material and suitable percentage concentrations that yielded optimal supercapacitor performance. From the overall results of the electrochemical analysis of cyclic voltammetry (CV), cell-B delivered higher capacitance of 86.60.10 Fg^?1 which was higher than the capacitance obtained by cell-C (65 Fg^?1) and even doubling the capacitance obtained by cell-A (42.1 Fg^?1). Whereas the charge-discharge (CD) tests carried out in the cells reveals that, even at the lower voltage window of 1.5 V, cell-B delivered better than cells A and C with a balanced and better discharge capacitance of 119.0 Fg^?1 and higher energy/power densities of 597.0 Jg^?1/12.6 Jg^?1s^?1and very low internal resistance.

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