title: Cotton-textile-enabled flexible self-sustaining power packs via roll-to-roll fabrication.
abstract: With rising energy concerns, efficient energy conversion and storage devices are required to provide a sustainable, green energy supply. Solar cells hold promise as energy conversion devices due to their utilization of readily accessible solar energy; however, the output of solar cells can be non-continuous and unstable. Therefore, it is necessary to combine solar cells with compatible energy storage devices to realize a stable power supply. To this end, supercapacitors, highly efficient energy storage devices, can be integrated with solar cells to mitigate the power fluctuations. Here, we report on the development of a solar cell-supercapacitor hybrid device as a solution to this energy requirement. A high-performance, cotton-textile-enabled asymmetric supercapacitor is integrated with a flexible solar cell via a scalable roll-to-roll manufacturing approach to fabricate a self-sustaining power pack, demonstrating its potential to continuously power future electronic devices.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia, 122 Engineer's Way, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4746, USA.
authors.forename: Zan
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-3047-5616
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia, 122 Engineer's Way, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4746, USA.
authors.forename: Clifton
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bumgardner
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia, 122 Engineer's Way, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4746, USA.
authors.forename: Ningning
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia, 122 Engineer's Way, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4746, USA.
authors.forename: Yunya
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2540 Dole Street, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA.
authors.forename: Jingjing
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-9337-6178
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia, 122 Engineer's Way, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4746, USA.
authors.forename: Xiaodong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li