Direct Assembly of 3D-BCN Microspheres as a Microsupercapacitor Electrode for Wearable Energy Storage

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2020 Oct 21;12(42):47416-47424. doi: 10.1021/acsami.0c11982. Epub 2020 Oct 12.

Abstract

Scalable and cost-effective fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) boron carbon nitride (BCN) microspheres was first demonstrated by hydrothermal and annealing methods. In particular, the specific surface area of 3D-BCN-4 reached 1390.12 m2 g-1 and had a high hierarchical pore structure. An all-printed solid-state flexible microsupercapacitor (MSC) based on 3D-BCN-4 microspheres as an electrode material was fabricated for the first time by a screen printing method, which also provided efficacious properties. The single MSC areal capacitance reached 41.6 mF cm-2. Furthermore, the remarkable mechanical flexibility was also achieved for the device with evidence that no obvious capacitance loss occurred even upon bending to 180°, and the device had a 93.3% capacitance retention after 1000 cycles. In addition, the maximum energy density reached 0.00832 mW h cm-2, and the highest power density was 2 mW cm-2. These results show the synthesis of 3D-BCN by a facile and effective method with excellent electrochemical performance, which should provide a promising direction to wearable energy storage devices.

Keywords: microspheres, microsupercapacitors; three-dimensional (3D) boron carbon nitride (BCN); wearable energy storage.