Triboelectrification is an effect that is known to each and every one probably ever since the ancient Greek time, but it is usually taken as a negative effect and is avoided in many technologies. We have recently invented a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) that is used to convert mechanical energy into electricity by a conjunction of triboelectrification and electrostatic induction. As for this power generation unit, in the inner circuit, a potential is created by the triboelectric effect due to the charge transfer between two thin organic/inorganic films that exhibit opposite tribo-polarity; in the outer circuit, electrons are driven to flow between two electrodes attached on the back sides of the films in order to balance the potential. Ever since the first report of the TENG in January 2012, the output power density of TENG has been improved for five orders of magnitude within 12 months. The area power density reaches 500 W/m², volume density reaches 490 kW/m³, and a conversion efficiency of ~50% has been demonstrated. The TENG can be applied to harvest all kind mechanical energy that is available but wasted in our daily life, such as human motion, walking, vibration, mechanical triggering, rotating tire, wind, flowing water and more. Alternatively, TENG can also be used as a self-powered sensor for actively detecting the static and dynamic processes arising from mechanical agitation using the voltage and current output signals of the TENG, respectively, with potential applications for touch pad and smart skin technologies. The TENG is possible not only for self-powered portable electronics, but also as a new energy technology with a potential of contributing to the world energy in the near future.
Z.L. Wang “Triboelectric Nanogenerators as New Energy Technology for Self-Powered Systems and as Active Mechanical and Chemical Sensors”, ACS Nano 7 (2013) 9533-9557.
G. Zhu, J. Chen, T. Zhang, Q. Jing, Z. L. Wang* “Radial-arrayed rotary electrification for high-performance triboelectric generator”, Nature Communication, 5 (2014) 3456.

Piezoelectric unimorphs are made of laminating a piezoelectric layer with an inert flexible substrate. They have found wide applications in sensing, energy harvesting, and actuation. We have developed a comprehensive understanding of the effects of unimorph thickness ratios on mechanical load induced voltages, charges, and energies, as well as voltage induced displacements of eight different boundary conditions, with both analytical and numerical means. By adopting an average s₃₃ stress method, the effect of d₃₃ for both point and distributed loads is taken care of and our analytical equations are able to fully capture the FEM results which are obtained by COMSOL Piezoelectric Devices Module. Non-monotonic voltage and energy generation versus thickness ratio curves have been found for load-controlled energy generation scenarios. When the unimorph is actuated by applied voltage, non-uniform maximum deflection versus thickness ratio curves are also found. Our results reveal that the optimum thickness ratios for actuation is an order higher than the optimum thickness ratios for energy generation. In conclusion, closed-form analytical solutions are now available for the thickness optimization of piezoelectric unimorphs generators and actuators, under different boundary conditions.

We report a novel class of energy harvesters for generating AC power through repeated mechanical bending and unbending. The device consists of two identical Li-alloyed Si as the electrodes, separated by electrolyte-soaked polymer separator. The device is in soft thin-film form and is highly flexible and durable. Bending induced asymmetric stresses generate chemical potential difference, driving the lithium ion flux from the compressed to the tensed electrode to generate electrical current. Removing the bending reverses ion flux and electrical current. Our thermodynamic analysis reveals that the ideal energy-harvesting efficiency of this device is dictated by the Poisson&’s ratio of the electrodes. For the thin-film based energy harvester used in this study, we show that the device has an ideal efficiency of 27.8% and achieves a generating capacity of 10%. The device is well-suited for harvesting low-frequency motion energy because of its finite current width. We provide kinetic models to explain the current width and the possibility of timescale tunability. The device demonstrates a practical use of stress-composition coupling in electrochemically active alloys to harvest low-grade mechanical energies from various low-frequency motions, such as everyday human activities that generate inhomogeneous stress.

Energy harvesting systems based on piezoelectric and triboelectric nanomaterials are in great demand, as they can provide routes for the development of self-powered devices which are highly flexible, stretchable, mechanically durable, and can be used in a wide range of applications. Our recent research interest mainly focuses on the fabrication of piezoelectric and triboelectric nanogenerators based on various kinds of nanomaterials. Flexible nanogenerators exhibit good performances and are easy to integrate which make it the perfect candidate for many applications, and therefore crucial to develop. In this presentation, I firstly introduce the fundamentals and possible device applications of nanogenerators, including their four basic operation modes. Then the different improvement parameters will be discussed. As main topics, I will also address a couple of recent achievements regarding highly stretchable piezoelectric-pyroelectric hybrid nanogenerators, transparent flexible graphene triboelectric nanogenerators, textile-based wearable triboelectric nanogenerators, etc.

This seminar introduces three recent progresses that can extend the application of self-powered flexible inorganic electronics. The first part will introduce self-powered flexible piezoelectric energy harvesting technology. Energy harvesting technologies converting external sources (such as vibration and bio-mechanical energy) into electrical energy is recently a highly demanding issue. The high performance flexible thin film nanogenerator was fabricated by transferring the perovskite thin film from bulk substrates for self-powered biomedical devices such as pacemaker and brain stimulation. The second part will introduce flexible electronics including large scale integration (LSI) and high density memory. Flexible memory is an essential part of electronics for data processing, storage, and radio frequency (RF) communication. To fabricate flexible large scale integration and fully functional memory, we integrated flexible single crystal silicon transistors with 0.18 CMOS process and memristor devices. The third part will discuss the flexible GaN/GaAs LED for implantable biomedical applications. Inorganic III-V light emitting diodes (LEDs) have superior characteristics, such as long-term stability, high efficiency, and strong brightness. Our flexible GaN/GaAs thin film LED enable the dramatic extension of not only consumer electronic applications but also the biomedical devices such as biosensor or optogenetics. Finally, we will discuss laser material interaction for flexible and nanomaterial applications. Laser technology is extremely important for future flexible electronics since it can adopt high temperature process on plastics, which is essential for high performance electronics, due to ultra-short pulse duration. (e.g. LTPS process over 1000 °C) We will explore our new exciting results of this field from both material and device perspective.
Related References (from Keon&’s group as corresponding authors)
[1] Nano Letters 11, 5438, 2011. [2] Nano Letters 10, 4939, 2010.
[3] Nano Letters 12, 4810, 2012. [4] Nano Letters 14, 7031, 2014
[5] Adv. Mater, 26, 2514, 2014. [6] Adv. Mater. 26, 4880, 2014
[7] Adv. Mater, 26, 7480, 2014 [8] Adv. Mater. 24, 2999, 2012.
[9] Adv. Mater. 10.1002/adma.201501592 [10] Adv. Mater. 27, 2866, 2015
[11] Energy Environ. Sci. 10.1039/C5EE01593F [12] Energy Environ. Sci., 7, 4035, 2014
[13] ACS Nano 7, 11016, 2013 [14] ACS Nano 9, 4120, 2015
[15] ACS Nano 7, 4545, 2013 [16] ACS Nano 7, 2651, 2013.
[17] ACS Nano 8, 9492, 2014 [18] ACS Nano 8, 7671, 2014
[19] ACS Nano, 10.1021/acsnano.5b02579 [20] Adv. Energy Mater. 3, 1539, 2013
[21] Adv. Energy Mater. 5, 1500051, 2015 [22] Adv. Func. Mater. 24, 2620, 2014
[23] Adv. Func. Mater. 24, 6914, 2014 [24] Nano Energy, 14, 111, 2015
[25] Nano Energy, 1, 145, 2012

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) have been developed to harvest mechanical energy through contact/friction motions. However, the efficiency of the TENG might be limited by the energy loss during power generation process, such as heat dissipation, wearing and plastic deformation. In this work, a hybrid cell consisting of a TENG and a pyroelectric-piezoelectric nanogenerator (PPENG) was developed for high-efficient mechanical energy harvesting through multiple mechanisms. Outstanding output performances were demonstrated for both the TENG and PPENG, and the hybridized output power could provide a sustainable power source for driving a light-emitting diode with extended illumination time and charging a supercapacitor. Furthermore, the hybrid cell was also applied as a multi-functional self-powered sensor for measuring both the temperature and the normal force. These excellent performances of the triboelectric-pyroelectric-piezoelectric hybrid cell enhance the energy-harvesting efficiency significantly (by 26.2% at 1 k#8486; load resistance), improve the charging rate greatly (by 81.3%), and enable the self-powered sensing, which will lead to a variety of advanced applications.

Recently, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) have received increasing interest due to their potential for mechanical energy harvesting. Important advancements have been achieved to increase the output power and efficiency, even as new structures have emerged. Their robustness and endurance have increased, but there still remain some concerns about the degradation and lifetime of TENG. How will TENGs age under intensive use in daily life? To address this issue, we propose in this paper to use shape memory polymer (SMP) to extend TENG&’s lifetime and better guarantee their performance. For this purpose we have introduced a new smart SMP-TENG structure which has the capacity to be healed and recover good performance after degradation of its triboelectric layer. We studied the degradation and the self-healing process of SMP-TENG, improving their endurance, life time and thus demonstrating the huge potential of self-healing SMP-TENGs.

Computer keyboard is one of the most common, reliable, accessible and effective approaches used for human-machine interfacing. Accessing the information provided by computer from internet dictates the quality, efficiency and happiness of our work and life. A keyboard, an indispensable component of the system, is the only means for information input and control for many purposes such as information recording/outputting, financial management, bill payment, personal communications and many more. With this regard, the heavy reliance on computer incurs a major concern for its security issue. Although keyboard has been used for hundreds of years for advancing human civilization, studying human behavior by keystroke dynamics using smart keyboard remains a great challenge.
Here we report the first intelligent, self-powered, non-mechanical-punching keyboard enabled by contact electrification between human fingers and a flexible transparent thin-film layer. The intelligent keyboard (IKB) converts mechanical stimuli applied onto the keyboard into local electronic signals without applying an external power. It can not only sensitively trigger a wireless alarm system once gentle finger tapping occurs but also be capable of tracing and recording typing contents by detecting both the dynamic time intervals between and during inputting letters and the force used for each typing action. Such features promise its use as a smart security system that can realize detection, alert, recording, and identification. Moreover, the IKB is able to identify personal characteristics from different individuals if assisted by behavioral biometric of keystroke dynamics. Furthermore, the IKB can effectively harness typing motions for electricity to charge commercial electronics at arbitrary typing speed larger than 100 characters per min, with an area power density of 69.6 mWcm^-2. Given the above features, the IKB can be potentially applied not only to self-powered electronics but also to artificial intelligence, cyber security, and computer or network access control. The justified concepts and demonstrations in this work can be immediately and extensively adopted in a variety of applications, and come into effect of improving the way of our living.
References: (* indicate co-first author).
1.J. Chen*, G. Zhu*, J. Yang, Q. Jing, P. Bai, W. Yang, X. Qi, Y. Su and Z. L. Wang. ACS Nano9 (2015), 105-116.
2.J.Chen*, G. Zhu*, T. Zhang, Q. Jing and Z. L. Wang. Nat. Commun.5 (2014), 3426.
3.J. Chen*, G. Zhu*, W. Yang, Q. Jing, P. Bai, Y. Yang, T. C. Hou and Z. L. Wang. Adv. Mater.25(2013), 6094-6099.
4.J. Chen*, J. Yang*, Z. Li, X. Fan, Y. Zi, Q. Jing, H. Guo, Z. Wen, K. C. Pradel, S. Niu and Z. L. Wang. ACS Nano 9 (2015), 3324-3331.
5.J. Yang*, J. Chen*, Y. Su, Q. Jing, Z. Li, F. Yi, X. Wen, Z. Wang and Z. L. Wang. Adv. Mater. 27(2015), 1316-1326.

Transparent electronic devices built on flexible substrates are expected to meet emerging technological demands for the next generation of flexible electronic and optoelectronic devices. A suitable energy source is a vital part for realizing fully self-powered systems. Energy harvesting and conversion technology from environment in which the system will be deployed is a promising route. Recently, we have introduced a new concept on the basis of triboelectrification and electrostatic induction for successfully converting mechanical energy into electric energy at an energy conversion efficiency as high as 50%. Subsequently, transparent triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) using indium tin oxide (ITO) or graphene as electrodes have been demonstrated, which are the only possible power source that light can penetrate through. However, there is a need for a low-cost and large-area compatible technology for producing transparent TENGs with high-output power supply, aiming for applications such as touch screens.
In our previous work, we fabricated a transparent TENG and pressure sensor by using polyester (PET) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) films as flexible substrates to integrate ITO electrodes. It has also been demonstrated that the patterned surface is an effective method to improve the output performance of the TENG. However, realizing such a structure is not trivial in mass production and the patterned structure will reduce the transparency of the device due to the light scattering effect. Here, we present a simple, cost-effective and large-scalable method for fabrication of highly transparent TENGs.
Although triboelectric effect has been known for thousands years, the underlying mechanism is actually very complex and still under debating. The competing possible mechanisms appear to include electron transfer, ion transfer, bond dissociation, chemical changes, and material transfer, and it is likely that different mechanisms may be involved depending on the specific materials and environmental conditions. [18-21] Usually, it needs specialized equipment to characterize the charged surface and study the mechanism. It is worth noting that the output performance of TENG can directly reflect the capacity of the triboelectrification. Herein, we use this feature to investigate the mechanism of the triboelectrification by examining various factors on the performance of TENG. Furthermore, another meaningful outcome of our study is that we explore the mechanism from the microscopic and molecular perspective using the methods for surface characterization, which would be beneficial to the improvement and application of TENG at a large scale.
References
F. R. Fan, Z. Q. Tian, Z. L. Wang, Nano Energy 2012, 1, 328-334.
F. R. Fan, L. Lin, G. Zhu, W. Z. Wu, R. Zhang, Z. L. Wang, Nano Lett. 2012, 12, 3109-3114.
F. R. Fan, J. J. Luo, W. Tang, C. Y. Li, C. P. Zhang, Z. Q. Tian, Z. L. Wang, J. Mater. Chem. A 2014, 2, 13219-13225.

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have been invented as a high efficient, cost-effective and easy scalable energy harvesting technology for converting ambient mechanical energy into electricity at a total energy conversion efficiency as high as 85%. The four basic working modes of the TENG have been demonstrated, each of which has different structural design and choice of materials to accommodate the corresponding mechanical triggering conditions. A common standard is thus required to quantify the performance of the TENGs so that their outputs can be compared and evaluated. Here, starting from the plot of built-up voltage V - total transferred charges Q, we propose a general figure-of-merit (FOM) for defining the performance of a TENG, which is composed of a structural FOM related to the design of the TENG and a material FOM that is the square of the surface charge density. The structural FOM is derived and simulated to compare the TENGs with different configurations. A standard method is introduced to quantify the material FOM for a general surface. This study is likely to establish the standards for developing TENGs toward practical applications and industrialization.

Effectively harvesting energy from ambient environment as a renewable energy source has attracted much interest. But as one rich source of water, the rain drop energy still need to be exploited deeply. Previous studies employed triboelectric generator have successfully harvested its energy. However, the output performance and energy conversion efficiency were in very low level. Besides, the hydrophobic surface with micro textured structure made the device not transparent or flexible, which limits its practical applications.
To improve the energy harvesting efficiency, we developed interdigital-electrodes-based triboelectric generators (TEGs) which is totally transparent. It is composed of PET substrate, interdigital-shaped ITO electrode, PDMS dielectric layer, and ZXL-SS-02 hydrophobic layer. The contact angle of its surface with a 2 mu;L was about 120°. Compared with PET-ITO film, the fabricated device exhibits a better transmittance (more than 80%) in the visible and near infrared region.
The working principal of the device is based on the triboelectricity and electrostatic induction. The surface of the hydrophobic layer will possess negative charges once contacts with a water drop, while the water drop will be charged positive. Along with the droplet flowing, the surface will be charged successively, which can drive the current to flow between the interdigital electrodes according to the electrostatic induction effect.
The device was characterized by a 30 mu;L droplet flowing on its surface while the inclined angle theta; was fixed at 60°. The obtained peak-to-peak voltage and current were about 50 V and 800 nA separately. The maximum RMS power was 1.1 mu;W under a 70 M optimal resistance. The output electricity by a water drop could charge a 30 nF capacitor to 1.2 V, corresponding to 36 nC transferred charge. By adjusting the theta;, a maximum output energy of about 2.67 mu;J was obtained at 80°. The average energy conversion efficiency was about 4%, and a highest efficiency of about 8.7% was achieved when the angle was 10°. Compared with previous works, our device shows much better output performance and higher efficiency.
In summary, this work presents a transparent and flexible generator based on contact-electrification effect for harvesting water drop energy. The generator shown a transmittance of more than 80% in the visible and near infrared region. Facilitated by the utilization of interdigital-shaped electrode, this generator could harvest a water drop&’s energy for multiple time. Employed the simple structure and method, considerate output performance was observed. With a 30 mu;L water drop flowing on the device, 22 V effective voltage and 2.67 mu;J maximum output energy were achieved, while a maximum energy conversion efficiency of about 8.7% was observed. Thanks to its highly transparency, simple manufacturing process, and high output performance, the generator has much potential to harvest the energy from rain drop or liquid flow in microfluidics.

Recently, several interesting reports suggest a moving droplet of sea water or ionic solution over monolayer graphene using pseudocapacitive effects between graphene and a single droplet, producing electrical signals of about 19 nW as a maximum power output. This power output is very low, thus limited device application, indicating increasing power output is much challenging. Here, we demonstrate anomalous large power generation from a single moving water droplet on the basis of triboelectrification-induced pseudocapacitance between graphene and a droplet. The output power of around 2 mu;W achieved from a single moving droplet onto a monolayer graphene, which is one hundred-folds larger than that in the previous research. Very strong negative triboelectric potential on the surface of a PTFE template is generated during a graphene transfer process. The triboelectric potential induces positive and negative charge accumulation on the bottom and top surfaces of graphene, respectively. The negative charges accumulated onto the graphene top surface are driven forward by the moving droplet, charging and discharging at the front and rear of the droplet.

Micrometer-size [110] (Na_1-xK_x)NbO₃ (NKN) platelets were synthesized through the annealing of (K_8-8xNa_8x)Nb₆O₁₉middot;nH₂O (KNNH) precursors at 500^oC. The plate-like KNNH precursors were produced from (1-y)NaOH-yKOH + Nb₂O₅ specimens using the hydrothermal process at 160^oC. The size of the NKN platelets was similar to that of the KNNH precursor, but the surfaces of the NKN platelets were rough while the KNNH precursor had a smooth surface. Formation of a rough surface is related to the vigorous evaporation of the H₂O from the KNNH platelets during the annealing process at high temperature. NKN platelets with the smooth surfaces can be synthesized using KNNH platelets, which were heated to 150^oC to evaporate H₂O before annealing at 500^oC. These NKN platelets can be used for the fabrication of textured NKN ceramics. The nanogenerator was synthesized using NKN platelets and their output power will be presented in this work.

Graphene has a unique combination of electrical, mechanical, and optical properties, is being actively explored for future electronic applications. Specially, graphene has an excellent optical transparency, mechanical flexibility, high mechanical elasticity. These fascinating properties make graphene an ideal material for photodetectors, transparent, flexible electrodes in solar cells and nanogenerators.
For graphene triboelectric nanogenerator, device need high-k dielectric material for insulating layer. However high-k dielectric such as Al₂O₃ or HfO₂ doesn&’t deposit on graphene surface because graphene has sp² atomic configuration. Hence, in this present work we demonstrated the deposition of high-k dielectric material on graphene using hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) as a buffer layer. Transmission electron and atomic farce microscopy studies show that presence h-BN layer on the top of graphene facilitates the growth of high-quality aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃) layer by atomic layer deposition (ALD). Simulation results also support the experimental observations and provide explanation for suitability of h-BN as buffer layer. The analysis of Raman and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) data also confirms the importance of h-BN for growth of good-quality oxide dielectric materials. Also, h-BN works as protective shield to prevent graphene from oxidation during ALD of Al₂O₃ for the fabrication of triboelectric nanogenerator.

Recently, silver nanowires (AgNWs) have had a great interest as a conducting material for flexible and transparent electrode. In this paper, we studied the network structure formation of AgNWs by stamping transfer process using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) with various surface treatments. Surface treatment could control the transfer yield (thickness) of AgNWs. We have designed various conditions of AgNWs surface using silane-coupling modifiers. Flexible PDMS substrate, with embedded AgNWs, was fabricated by the following processes; spraying AgNWs layer and network film formation on silicon wafer, transferring and curing of PDMS, and releasing AgNWs/ PDMS from the original substrate (glass). Transfer yield of AgNWs was adjusted by the variation of surface treatment condition (different concentration and exposure time) with silane-based modifier coating such as Methacryloxypropyltrimethoxysilane (MPS) and Octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS) on top of AgNWs. Transparency of embedded AgNWs film has increased up to 20% at the optimum surface treatment condition. Especially, MPS treatment process was appropriate for thin film organic device substrate due to its generation of transferred AgNWs with low surface roughness profile. As a result, polymer bulk-hetero junction (BHJ) solar cells with anodes composed of AgNWs have been successfully fabricated with the following conventional device structure: embedded AgNWs film (Anode)/ poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly (styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) (45nm)/ poly[(4,8-bis-(2-ethylhexyloxy)-venzo[1,2-b;4.5-b&’]dithiophen)-2,6-diyl-alt-(4-(2-ethylhexanoyl)-thieno[3,4-b]thiophen))-2,6-diyl] (PBDTTT-c): phenyl-C₇₁-butyric acid methyl ester (PC₇₁BM) (110nm)/ LiF (0.7nm)/ Al (100nm). The organic solar cell showed 3.2% of power conversion efficiency (Jsc=10.333 mA/cm2, Fill factor=43.8%, Voc=0.71V) at the condition of the optimized MPS treatment, and this AgNWs/ PDMS embedded substrate provided a working range of substrate stretching within 15~25 %.

There is an urgent need to look for alternate and renewable energy source as fossil fuel based energy sources are depleting at an alarming rate. Recently piezoelectric materials based renewable energy source by utilizing stray vibrational energy have emerged as an alternative for this demand. Here we report facile, low temperature synthesis of large area self assembled Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) based micro/nanostructures using hydrothermal method for omni-directional vibrational energy harvesting. Growth morphologies are found to be dependent on concentration and pressure inside the reaction chamber. Extensive characterizations using SEM, TEM, XRD, raman spectroscopy, absorption spectroscopy etc have been performed to identify quality of synthesized material. These synthesized micro/nanostructures film were used for making functional miniaturized device for omni-directional energy harvesting.
Keywords: Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT), Vibrational Energy, piezoelectric materials, Hydrothermal, Energy harvesting.

With the rapid growth of portable electronics and sensor networks, mobile and sustainable energy sources for these devices becomes indispensable in modern society. Recently, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) based on contact electrification and electrostatic induction emerge as a promising mechanical energy harvesting technique because of their unique figure of merits, including high output power density, ultra-high energy conversion efficiency, low weight, cost-effective materials, and high adaptability design to different applications. However, because of the inherent uncontrollable and unstable characteristics of the environmental mechanical energy source, the converted electrical energy from TENG is thus unstable and hardly utilized to directly power electronic devices. Thus, understanding the integration performance of TENGs with an energy storage unit is critical for designing a practical energy harvesting system. However, until now there are still many mysteries about the charging behavior of TENGs.
In this work, the characteristics of utilizing a TENG to charge a capacitor are thoroughly studied. Through rigorous mathematical derivation, TENGs have the saturation charging behavior, which is completely analogous to utilizing a DC voltage source with an internal resistance to charge a load capacitor. The TENG with larger short circuit transferred charges and smaller inherent TENG capacitance can charge a load capacitor to a higher saturation voltage under unlimited charging cycles. Besides, the TENG with larger inherent capacitance can provide a smaller charging time constant. An optimum load capacitance that matches the TENG&’s impedance is observed for the maximum stored energy as well. However, different from unidirectional charging, this optimum load capacitance is linearly proportional to the charging cycle numbers and the inherent capacitance of the TENG. Finally, corresponding experiments were performed to further validate the above theoretical prediction to show its application in guiding experiments. [1]
With the above thorough understanding of TENG charging characteristics, we developed the first practical exclusively TENG self-powered systems through systematical design and optimization. A power management board was designed for TENG to realize maximum charging efficiency. With solely human motion as the energy source, we can continuously provide DC electrical energy for the use of practical portable electronics, including pedometers, temperature sensors, and calculators. This work clearly shows the unique TENG potential as a power source for powering consumer electronics. [2]
Reference:
1. S. Niu, Y. Liu, Y. S. Zhou, S. Wang, L. Lin, Z. L. Wang. IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, 2015, 2, 641
2. S. Niu, X. F. Wang, F. Yi, Z. L. Wang, manuscript submitted

In this study, the triboelectric generator based on conductive textile was proposed to generate energy from stretching motion. Previous triboelectric generators have limited stretchability because of non-stretchable materials or structures. Also, most of the triboelectric generators were operated by pushing motion in the vertical direction.[1][2] Proposed conductive textile based triboelectric generator was composed of corrugated stretchable conductive textile sewing on Ag textile which is coated by PDMS. Triboelectric energy is generated from electric potential difference between two materials by pushing and stretching motion, when the two material contacts; however, the corrugated structure generates a power regardless of the direction of the force distributed on the Ag textile and PDMS. If the conductive textile based triboelectric generator applies to fabric, power can be generated from the various body movements including pushing and stretching. When the conductive textile based triboelectric generator contact and releasing repeatedly, output voltage was 15 V. In addition, the voltage of 150 V was observed under the mechanical pushing force of 0.1 kgf. The experiment result represents the triboelectric generator made by corrugated stretchable textile can be integrated into clothing for generating the energy. Reference [1] Wanchul Seung et al., ACS Nano, 9, 4 (2015). [2] Yeong Hwan Ko et al., RSC Advances, 5 (2015). (This research was supported by the ITRC support program, IITP-2015-R0992-15-1021)

We fabricated new prototype triboelectric generator that can convert the mechanical energy to electrical energy efficiently. A two-ply yarn based triboelectric generator enables energy generation by a conjunction of triboelectrification and electrostatic induction. The silver conductive fiber with diameter of 160 mu;m and silver conductive fiber coated silicon rubber are used. Silver conductive fiber and Si rubber is selected as the active triboelectric materials due to flexibility, lightweight and proper stiffness. According to triboelectric series, silver is more positively charged, while the Si-rubber is negatively charged. The fibers that have opposite triboelectric polarities are twisted each other to make a single thread. As a result of triboelectric properties, the voltage output of two-ply yarn is 7 V where compressive force is 1 Newton. Also voltage output of two-ply yarn is 3 V at stretched. Through an external load, the two-ply structure based generator enables periodic contact and noncontact between materials that differed in polarity of triboelectricity yield a potential drop which will drive electrons to flow. Therefore, energy conversion is achieved with the triboelectric effect and electrostatic induction. Because of the easy fabrication, cost effectiveness, flexible properties, the two-ply based triboelectric generator expands the potential applications to harvesting energy from moving object or human motion. (This research was supported by the ITRC support program, IITP-2015-R0992-15-1021)

Colloidal perovskite oxide nanocrystals have attracted a great deal of interest owing to the ability to tune physical properties by virtue of the nanoscale, and generate thin film structures under mild chemical conditions, relying on self-assembly or heterogeneous mixing. This is particularly true for ferroelectric/dielectric perovskite oxide materials, for which device applications cover piezoelectrics, MEMs, memory, gate dielectrics and energy storage. The synthesis of complex oxide nanocrystals, however, continues to present issues pertaining to quality, yield, % crystallinity, purity and may also suffer from tedious separation and purification processes, which are disadvantageous to scaling production. We report a simple, green and scalable “self-collection” growth method that produces uniform and aggregate-free colloidal perovskite oxide nanocrystals including BaTiO₃ (BT), Ba_xSr_1-xTiO₃ (BST) and quaternary oxide BaSrTiHfO₃ (BSTH) in high crystallinity and high purity. The synthesis approach is solution processed, based on the sol-gel transformation of metal alkoxides in alcohol solvents with controlled or stoichiometric amounts of water and in the stark absence of surfactants and stabilizers, providing pure colloidal nanocrystals in a remarkably low temperature range (15 #730;C -55 #730;C). Under a static condition, the nanoscale hydrolysis of the metal alkoxides accomplishes a complete transformation to fully crystallized single domain perovskite nanocrystals with a passivated surface layer of hydroxyl/alkyl groups, such that the as-synthesized nanocrystals can exist in the form of super-stable and transparent sol, or self-accumulate to form a highly crystalline solid gel monolith of nearly 100% yield for easy separation/purification. The process produces high purity ligand-free nanocrystals excellent dispersibility in polar solvents, with no impurity remaining in the mother solution other than trace alcohol byproducts (such as isopropanol). The afforded stable and transparent suspension/solution can be treated as inks, suitable for printing or spin/spray coating, demonstrating great capabilities of this process for fabrication of high performance dielectric thin films. The simple “self-collection” strategy can be described as green and scalable due to the simplified procedure from synthesis to separation/purification, minimum waste generation, and near room temperature crystallization of nanocrystal products with tunable sizes in extremely high yield and high purity.

Regarding with triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), following factors including materials, architectural design for given occasion predominantly are believed to be quite important for performance of TENGs. There have been already many reports investigated for highly effective TENGs in terms of design, but choosing materials still remains great challenge.
Here, a multi-ferroelectric based triboelectric nanogenerator (MF-TENG) is developed for high power generation through taking advantage of optimum BaTiO₃ embedded P (VDF-TrFE) matrix film. Since fluorine atom originated from P (VDF-TrFE) is inclined to attract electrons once a contact electrification taken place, it induces large potential difference upon opposite triboelectric materials. While BaTiO₃ has higher dielectric constant than P (VDF-TrFE), which is associated with high output charge density compared to that of just using the single-layer of P (VDF-TrFE). MF-TENG having dimensions of 3 x 3 cm under 5 kgf exhibits high electrical performances: an instantaneous output voltage of 210 V and a current of 180mu;A, which is recordable output current as considered traditional TENGs&’ output performance, giving an average power density of approximately 4.2 mW. This MF-TENG is providing a new approach to enhance output power of TENGs using embedding ferroelectric material in order to drive various electric devices such as portable electronics, implantable and wearable devices.

Triboelectric effect has been knowing since more than a century and it can be observed only on the surface of dielectric materials such as polymers. There are speculations about the mechanism of this effect, but none of them are proven yet. Three important phenomenon are considerably strong to explain triboelectric effect, which are direct charge transfer, ion transfer and material transfer from surface to surface. Although mechanism of triboelectric effect is a conundrum, a closer look into recent studies, which partially explain the mechanism of triboelectric effect reveals that one can facilitate from this effect as a sensor or energy harvesting device. It has high capacity to drive electricity from contact and sliding of dielectric materials on their surfaces. This contact and separation phenomenon also causes separation in charges and thus induction of free charges on the electrodes coated on the surface of the dielectrics. Researchers succeeded to harvest over 1 kV and 1 mA from surrounding environmental motions. Surface structure and triboelectric polarity of materials play a major role to build high performance energy harvesting and sensor devices. Interestingly, not only solid materials but also pure water and liquid compounds were also prior to use in triboelectric devices. Many studies has been published that proving water waves are a good source of energy when freely move on a dielectric substrate. The mechanism is related to chemical polarity of the liquid as well as the surface and triboelectric properties of the dielectric substrate. The current study represents a smart energy harvesting and chemical sensing microfluidic systems that converts mechanical motion of chemicals droplets in a tubular poly(vinylidene floride) (PVDF) microfluidic channel to the electrical signals. The system consist of a single channel microfluidic channel with a PVDF micro-tubular attachment, which is produced using thermal fiber drawing technique. Channel lengths and the diameters can vary, but what effects the output voltage and current signal is the change in the speed or air - deionized water speed and size. We observed that increasing droplet speed increases the induced charge. When there is a continuous flow through the channel system generates enough power to power 6 LEDs. Finally, the system can detect the change in the ratio of water - ethanol mixture down to 5 %. Although output voltage signal is at the maximum 1 V when plane deionized water flushed, increasing ethanol percentage decreases the output voltage. Our system can be used for understanding chemical concentrations of liquid chemicals, when accurate and detailed calibration was applied for versatile solution.

Mechanical energy harvesting from the ambient environment is likely to play an important role for sustainable development of modern society, due to consumption of traditional fossil fuels and related environmental issues. In this regard, a novel approach of triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) has been recently invented that employs the coupling effect of triboelectrification and electrostatic induction. Both high output power and numerous practical applications have been demonstrated, indicating its promising potential as a new energy technology for large scale power conversion. However, the energy conversion efficiency and device durability are still essential issues, which may be limited by the relatively large frictional resistive force between triboelectric surfaces during the operation of the TENG, especially for the working modes based on sliding electrification.
Here in this work, we designed a novel working mode of rolling triboelectric nanogenerators (RTENG) that can deliver ultrahigh energy conversion efficiency without scarifying its robustness and stability. For the first time, rolling electrification between cylinder-shaped steel rods and planar thin films of fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP) was employed for converting the kinetic energy of rolling rods into electric power. The rolling triboelectric nanogenerator (RTENG) has a sandwiched structure composed of two FEP thin films and steel rods rolling between them. The rolling motion of the steel rods between the FEP thin films introduces triboelectric charges on both surfaces and led to the change of potential difference between each pair of electrodes on the back of the FEP layer, which drives the electrons flow in the external load. As power generators, each pair of output terminals can work independently that delivers an open-circuit voltage of 425 V, an instantaneous charge transfer of 0.145 uC, and a short-circuit current density of 5 mA/m². The two sets of output terminals can also be integrated to present an overall power density of up to 1.6 W/m². The impact of various structural factors was investigated to achieve optimization of the output performance. Owing to the low friction coefficient of the rolling movement, a high energy conversion efficiency of up to 55% has been demonstrated, with much smaller wearing of triboelectric surfaces as compared with sliding friction. Based on the basic concept of rolling electrification, many other prototypes of RTENGs have been successfully derived, like the rotating disk structure, the grating structure, and other structures based on rolling balls. This work demonstrates a new working mode of high-efficient and robust TENGs towards large scale energy harvesting.
Reference: L. Lin, Y. N. Xie, S. M. Niu, S. H. Wang, P. K. Yang, Z. L. Wang, ACS Nano, 2015, 9(1) 922-930.

Scavenging the widely existed mechanical energy from the environment and converting it into electricity through nanogenerators may provide new solutions to the current energy and environment problems. Based on piezoelectric effect and triboelectric effect, nanogenerators have been utilized to power electronic devices, cleaning air pollution, harvesting mechanical energy in large scale, etc. Combining the piezoelectric and triboelectric effects together to form hybrid nanogenerators can further promoting the practical applications, which not only enhances the power output, but also broadens the application fields. However, the investigation of the coupling between piezoelectric and triboelectric effects is currently insufficient. Therefore, in this paper, we demonstrated the theoretical and experimental studies of the coupled piezoelectric-triboelectric hybrid nanogenerators (PE-TENGs).
Firstly, theoretical comparison between piezoelectric and triboelectric nanogenerators has been demonstrated, indicating that both types of nanogenerators have similar dependence on size, material properties, and applied external force. Secondly, the coupling of piezoelectric and triboelectric effects in PE-TENGs at different structures was investigated through finite element method simulation. The results show that the structure, piezoelectric polarization direction, electrode connection, as well as the operation mode (i.e., piezoelectric and triboelectric effects work successively or simultaneously) together influence the final output performance of piezoelectric-triboelectric hybrid nanogenerators. Moreover, since the combination of piezoelectric and triboelectric effects can either enhance or reduce the total output, the obtained results may provide guidance on the design of high performance PE-TENGs. Finally, based on the theoretical and simulation results, experimental measurements of different PE-TENGs were conducted. For instance, a successive mode PE-TENG was tested at different electrode connections and the results showed highly consistency with the simulation. In addition, an r-shaped hybrid nanogenerator was designed to realize the simultaneous mode PE-TENG. Micro/nanostructured polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and nanostructured Al were utilized as the electrification materials in order to obtain high output performance. One cycle electric generation of this device can directly power 10 light-emitting diodes, and enables a 4-bit liquid crystal display to display continuously for more than 15 s.
References:
[1] M. Han, X. S. Zhang, B. Meng, W. Liu, W. Tang, X. Sun, W. Wang, H. Zhang, “r-Shaped Hybrid Nanogenerator with Enhanced Piezoelectricity”, ACS Nano, 2013, 7, 8554-8560.
[2] M. Han, X. Chen, B. Yu, H. Zhang, “Coupling of Piezoelectric and Triboelectric Effects: from Theoretical Analysis to Experimental Verification”, submitted.

Converting wasted energy into electrical energy has received great attention and become an important research field, especially since the commercialization of wearable device systems, wireless sensors and small electronics with low power consumption. Harvesting energy from wasted thermal energy in our environment would be a great opportunity and very important for low power consumption electronics. There is still a lack of research on energy harvesting based on the pyroelectric effect. In addition, the reported power-generating performance of pyroelectric nanogenerators (PNGs) is relatively low compared with other energy harvesters. Therefore, enhancement of the pyroelectric performance is one of the significant technical issues for meaningful usage of pyroelectric NGs as a new energy harvesting device. We innovatively designed a stretchable PNG (SPNG) based on a coupling of piezoelectric and pyroelectric effects using micro-patterned P(VDF-TrFE) and micro-patterned polydimethyl-siloxane (PDMS). We utilized the different thermal expansion characteristics of two materials to build strain on ferroelectric P(VDF-TrFE) films to generate a piezoelectric effect using only thermal energy. We compared the SPNG with a normal PNG (NPNG) which is based on the flat P(VDF-TrFE) coated onto a flat and rigid Ni/SiO₂/Si substrate, and we found that the highly sensitive SPNG operates from temperature changes that range from extremely low (#8710;T asymp; 0.64 K) to high (#8710;T asymp; 18.5 K), and generates maximum around 2.5 V of output voltage and 570 nA/cm² of output current density. Thermally induced stress, strain, and piezoelectric potential in the P(VDF-TrFE) of the SPNG and the NPNG were simulated in order to support the experimental results using COMSOL multi-physics simulation software. We successfully drove small electronic devices, such as a liquid-crystal display, light-emitting diodes, using output power from a SPNG. The results obtained in this work strongly suggest that the SPNG could be applied in various kinds of promising device applications such as self-powered wireless sensors, highly sensitive temperature imaging, and self-powered biomedical applications.

New strategies for heterogeneous integration of hard and soft materials into mechanically flexible, composite structures create opportunities in unusual classes of high performance devices for energy conversion and storage. This talk describes progress in inorganic photovoltaic modules and lithium ion batteries, both as separate devices and as co-integrated systems that can be stretched, twisted, folded or bent, by virtue of optimized mechanical designs.

According to current previsions our mobile society will have to face up an ever-increasing demand for portable energy sources. Although Li-ion batteries (LIB) are considered as the more mature technology to address this demand, LIB cathodes rely mostly on transition metal oxide materials suffering from limited resources. Consequently organic cathode materials have recently attracted vivid interest as more sustainable potential alternatives.^1-3 A promising candidate is the poly(2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidin-1-oxyl-4-yl methacrylate) (PTMA), which bears TEMPO side-groups able to undergo reversible redox reactions. PTMA displays excellent electrochemical features (high potential of 3.6 V vs. Li⁺/Li and high stability upon cycling) among those the most noticeable is its ultrafast charge/discharge capabilities.^1-3 Yet, this polymer suffers from its solubility in standard commercial electrolytes and from its electric insulating behavior.¹ The common approach to improve electrical transport and charge collection in PTMA electrodes involves incorporation of conductive carbon additives (typically 60 to 80 wt.%) detrimental to the specific capacity of the cathode.
To tackle these issues, we propose an original strategy towards dense grafting of PTMA on multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) in order to provide a chemical anchor and a more intimate contact between the polymer and the conductive carbon. Our strategy involves the surface initiated polymerization of a precursor monomer from the high-density initiator functionalized surface of MWCNTs and the oxidation of the accordingly obtained polymer precursor into PTMA, leading to MWCNT-g-PTMA composites.
Extended chemical and morphological analysis confirmed the compact core-shell morphology with a high active material mass loading of 60 wt.%. The electrodes made out of these MWCNT-g-PTMA composites display good cycling stability, good rate capabilities and an excellent specific capacity. Furthermore, with respect to common PTMA/conductive carbon blends, our polymer-grafted material displays superior power performances thanks to its enhanced charge transfer and current collection.⁴ The success of this strategy highlights the benefits of a precise distribution of the active material around the conducting network thanks to our designed core-shell morphology.
[1]H. Nishide and T. Suga, Electrochem Soc Interface, 2005, 14, 32-36. [2]T. Janoschka, M. D. Hager and U. S. Schubert, Adv Mater, 2012, 24, 6397-6409. [3]A. Vlad, N. Singh, J. Rolland, S. Melinte, P. Ajayan and J.-F. Gohy, Sci Rep, 2014, 4. [4]B. Ernould, M. Devos, J.-P. Bourgeois, J. Rolland, A. Vlad and J.-F. Gohy, J Mater Chem A, 2015, 3, 8832-8839.

In the last decade, radical polymers have emerged as promising electrode materials for secondary batteries because of their stable high voltage, sustainability and potential low-cost. Furthermore their electronic properties can be rationally tuned.
The most studied radical compounds for electrode applications are nitroxide-based polymers. Indeed, nitroxide can be reversibly n-doped to aminoxyl anion and p-doped to oxoammmonium cation in anodic and cathodic reaction, respectively. Poly(2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-1-piperidinyloxy-4-yl methacrylate) (PTMA) is the most common active material which has already been used as a cathode in Li-ion cells. It displays a reversible redox process around 3.6 V vs Li/Li+ with a theoretical capacity of 111 mAh/g.
High-throughput ab initio calculations could be used for the molecular engineering of new radical materials with tunable electrochemical properties. As a first step in this direction, we test the agreement between theoretical and experimental data for various organic radical polymers used as active materials in batteries. A ΔSCF method based on density functional theory is compared to the higher-level GW many-body perturbation theory and to experimental values. The results indicate that the method provides a fast and accurate estimation of the open cell voltage of these organic radical Li-ion batteries, suggesting it would be sufficiently robust for a preliminary screening of theoretically designed radicals.
In a second step we perform high-throughput simulations on modified nitroxyl radicals where the methyl groups are para-substituted with various functional groups. These new radicals show theoretical voltages ranging from 3.4 to 6.2 V and specific energies up to 564 mWh/g. Depending on the specific battery applications, the best candidates can be selected according to the desired open cell voltage and being tested experimentally.

Since the inception of flexible and wearable electronics, e.g., roll-up displayer, on-skin circuit, Google glass, and Apple iWatch, flexible energy storage devices have attracted much attention and interest. Because of their high energy density coupled with long life and passable rate capability, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have become the mainstream choice for consumer electronics and electric vehicles as well as grid energy storage. Therefore, it is desirable to bestow flexibility upon the LIBs. To this end, much effort has been devoted to not only planar but also fiber-shaped flexible LIBs. Some revolutions have been made compared with the traditional rigid LIBs consisting of current collector, active material, binder and conductive additives. The most pivotal change among flexible LIBs is the introduced flexible platforms, e.g., a metal mesh/fiber, a paper, a piece of cloth, a carbonaceous textile/film/fiber. The ideal platforms are required to possess good flexibility and strength, good conductivity and high specific surface area. Amongst them, the platform made of carbon nanotube (CNT) is deemed as one of the most promising types because CNT exhibits excellent mechanical, physical and chemical properties.
Herein, we have developed a series of both planar and fiber-shaped flexible LIBs based on the aligned CNTs. Firstly, aligned and spinnable CNT arrays are synthesized by chemical vapor deposition. Then, aligned CNT sheets can be directly dry-drawn from the arrays. Afterwards, the aligned CNT fibers can be prepared by twisting the aligned CNT sheets. The aligned CNT sheets and fibers directly serve as the flexible platforms on which the other battery components can be deposited, resulting in the flexible LIBs. In particularly, we have proposed a flexible planar LIB using CNT/silicon and CNT/lithium manganite respectively as the anode and cathode, a flexible and stretchable planar LIB using CNT/lithium titanate and CNT/lithium manganate respectively as the anode and cathode, and a fiber-shaped flexible LIB using CNT/silicon and CNT/lithium manganite respectively as the anode and cathode.
References
Wei Weng, Sun Q., Zhang Y., He S., Wu Q., Deng J., Fang X., Guan G., Ren J., Peng H.* Advanced Materials, 2015, 27, 1363.
Wei Weng, Sun Q., Zhang Y., Lin H., Ren J., Lu X., Wang M., Peng H.* Nano Letters, 2014, 14, 3432.
Wei Weng, Lin H., Chen X., Ren J., Zhang Z., Qiu L., Guan G., Peng H.* Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2014, 2, 9306.
Wei Weng, Wu, Q., Sun Q., Fang X., Guan G., Ren J., Zhang Y., Peng H.* Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2015, 3, 10942.
Lin H., Wei Weng, Ren J., Qiu L., Zhang Z., Chen P., Chen X., Deng J., Wang Y., Peng H.*. Advanced Materials, 2014, 26, 1217.
Edition, 2014, 53, 7864.

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries have attracted great attention as next-generation high specific energy density storage devices. However, the low sulfur loading in the cathode for Li-S battery greatly offsets its advantage in high energy density and limits the practical applications of such battery concepts. Flexible energy storage devices are also becoming increasingly important for future applications but are limited by the lack of suitable lightweight electrode materials with robust electrochemical performance under cyclic mechanical strain. Here, we proposed an effective strategy to obtainflexible Li-S battery electrodes with high energy density, high power density, and long cyclic life by adopting graphene foam-based electrodes. Graphene foam can provide a highly electrically conductive network, robust mechanical support and sufficient space for a high sulfur loading. The sulfur loading in graphene foam-based electrodes can be tuned from 3.3 to 10.1 mg cm^-2. The electrode with 10.1 mg cm^-2 sulfur loading could deliver an extremely high areal capacity of 13.4 mAh cm^-2, much higher than the commonly reported Li-S electrodes and commercially used lithium cobalt oxide cathode with a value of about 3-4 mAh cm^-2. Meanwhile, the high sulfur-loaded electrodes retain a high rate performance with reversible capacities higher than 450 mAh g^-1 under a large current density of 6 A g^-1 and preserve stable cycling performance with around 0.07% capacity decay per cycle over 1000 cycles.These impressive results indicate that such electrodes could enable high performance, fast charging, and flexible Li-S batteries that show stable performance over extended charge/discharge cycling.

Creation of extremely strong yet ultra-light materials can be achieved by capitalizing on the hishy;eshy;rshy;ashy;shy;rshy;chical design of 3-dimensional nano-architectures. Such structural meta-materials exhibit superior thermoshy;mechanical proshy;shy;shy;pershy;shy;ties at exshy;treshy;meshy;ly low mass densities (lighter than aerogels), making these solid foams ideal for many scientific and techshy;noshy;loshy;gishy;cal applications.
We present the fabrication of 3-dimensional architected meta-materials whose constituents vary in size from several nanometers to tens of microns to millimeters. We specifically discuss the mechanics and characterization of such architected meta-materials in the scope of energy storage applications. Attention is focused on Si-anode Li-ion batteries and on nanostructured cathodes for Li-O₂ batteries. For the Li-ion system, battery performance is tested in situ, in an electrochemical half-cell inside of a scanning electron microscope (SEM) using a lithium electrode and the nano-architected Si-Cu electrode. Electrochemical-mechanical experiments and modeling suggest that these electrodes are robust against fracture while maintaining reasonable charge-discharge-recharge performance. We also demonstrate the feasibility of using 3-D architected microlattices as positive electrodes in Li-O₂ batteries. Using Au as the electrode material and DME as the electrolyte solvent, we observed the formation of toroidal-shaped Li₂O₂ as the predominant product after 1^st discharge, their complete removal upon charge, and the accumulation of Li₂CO₃, HCO₂Li and CH₃CO₂Li after multiple cycles. These findings demonstrate that 3-dimensional architected meta-materials provide a useful testbed when serving as electrodes for studying fundamental electrochemistry and discharge product morphology.

Much like other physiochemical processes such as oxidation and corrosion in metals, electrochemical cycling of electrodes features intimate coupling between insertion kinetics and mechanical stress: the insertion of the secondary species generates localized stress, which in turn mediates electrochemical insertion rates. Here we report such strong coupling in nanostructure Si (nanoparticles and nanowires). We show that on the one hand lithiation self-generated stress causes lithiation retardation; on the other crystallographic orientation-dependent chemical reaction at the lithiation front modulates stress generation and fracture of the electrode materials. We further illustrate that externally force, such as bending, applied to Si nanowires breaks the lithiation symmetry, resulting in much higher lithiation rate in the tensile side than the compressive side of the nanowires. Finally we highlight that such coupling effect can be exploited to construct mechanically rechargeable batteries.

Development of high energy density flexible wearable batteries that maintain safe and stable operation under deformation is crucial to enable autonomous operation of electronic body-wearable systems. Among other compliant architectures, wire-shaped batteries offer unique versatility in terms of integration with wearable technologies due to their omnidirectional flexibility. Over the last years considerable progress was made in developing wire-shaped battery systems. However, simultaneously achieving high specific capacity and long cycle life of these devices remains a challenge.
Here we present compliant wire battery with improved stability (over 170 stable cycles with capacity retention above 98%) and linear capacity higher than previously reported (between 1.2 to 1.8 mAh cm^-1 at 0.5C discharge rate). The battery is assembled by utilizing low cost fabrication processes and is based on the silver-zinc chemistry. This technology, in addition to being energy dense and rechargeable, utilizes aqueous electrolyte and thus, is intrinsically safer than battery chemistries that rely on organic solvents.
Traditionally silver-zinc batteries have failed prematurely due to poisoning of zinc electrode by silver ions. Here we show that the lifetime of the battery can be improved by optimizing potassium hydroxide (KOH) concentration in the electrolyte to reduce the dissolution of silver ions and by embedding cellophane membrane between the anode and cathode to inhibit migration of silver ions towards the zinc electrode.
The obtained wire battery can successfully withstand mechanical perturbations that are expected to occur in wearable applications. Its capacity remains stable even after repeated flexing up to a bending radius of 1 cm. Furthermore, to demonstrate suitability of the wire battery for wearable applications, several batteries in series were assembled into flexible and stretchable form factor to power commercially available LEDs.

Powering flexible wearable electronics remains a challenge due to the size and packaging constraints of traditional mobile devices and battery chemistries. One possible solution to the space constraint is utilizing clothing for energy storage, converting previously passive materials into electrochemical energy storage devices. In this work, we target textile-based energy storage systems — where size constraints are less stringent, battery real estate is scalable to requirements, and flexibility is possible — fabricated with automated, modular processes.
We demonstrate zinc and Prussian blue analog battery electrodes on carbon fiber substrates that are fabricated in-house using an automated system composed of low-cost, modular electronics components. Conductive carbon fibers are drawn into zinc or copper hexacyanoferrate (CuHcf) slurries for the anode and cathode, respectively. After drying, the active material-coated fibers then are embedded in a sodium-rich agarose hydrogel electrolyte at neutral pH. Preliminary charge/discharge tests of the 1.7 V cells in a flooded configuration show an initial specific discharge capacity of 51 mAhr/g CuHcf, and 43 mAhr/g after 25 cycles. Further optimization of electrode processing is likely to improve cycle life significantly. Despite this low capacity, we explain how this can be used with minimalout any encapsulation, thereby making its system level energy density on par with, if not better than, aprotic techniques requiring hermetic sealing.
Additionally, we demonstrate batteries consisting of woven fibers as a proof of concept towards realizing wearable and washable electronics. We characterize the physical properties of the fiber battery with SEM, stress loading, and washing tests. Charge cycling, cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy is performed on the woven structures.

We report the first successful demonstration of a “π-conjugated redox polymer” simultaneously featuring a π-conjugated backbone and integrated redox sites, which can be stably and reversibly n-doped to a high doping level of 2.0 with significantly enhanced electronic conductivity. The properties of such a heavily n-dopable polymer, poly{[N,Nprime;-bis(2-octyldodecyl)-1,4,5,8-naphtha- lenedicarboximide-2,6-diyl]-alt-5,5prime;-(2,2prime;-bithiophene)} (P(NDI2OD-T2)),werecomparedvis-a-#768;vistothoseofthe corresponding backbone-insulated poly{[N,Nprime;-bis(2-octyl- dodecyl)-1,4,5,8-naphthalenedicarboximide-2,6-diyl]-alt- 5,5prime;-[2,2prime;-(1,2-ethanediyl)bithiophene]} (P(NDI2OD- TET)). When evaluated as a charge storage material for rechargeable Li batteries, P(NDI2OD-T2) delivers 95% of its theoretical capacity at a high rate of 100C (72 s per chargeminus;discharge cycle) under practical measurement conditions as well as 96% capacity retention after 3000 cycles of deep dischargeminus;charge. Electrochemical, impe- dance, and charge-transport measurements unambiguously demonstrate that the ultrafast electrode kinetics of P(NDI2OD-T2) are attributed to the high electronic conductivity of the polymer in the heavily n-doped state.

Molybdenum dioxide (MoO₂) is commonly utilized in electrochromic, catalytic, sensing, field emission and recording media devices; however, its demonstration in supercapacitors is very limited. It has unique physical and chemical properties such as good conductivity, good chemical stability and cyclability. In this work, we report on the fabrication and characterization of supercapacitors with nanocomposite MoO₂ and silver nanowire network electrodes to investigate their capacitive properties. MoO₂ was deposited onto Ag nanowire thin films by electrodeposition. Ag nanowire thin films on polyethylene terephthalate substrates provided high conductivity and a template for the attachment of MoO₂. Electrochemical properties such as specific capacity and cycling ability of supercapacitors with coaxial composite electrodes were then investigated through cyclic voltammetry, chronopotentiometry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. A specific capacitance of 435 F/g was obtained for the nanocomposite electrodes, which was higher than that of bulk MoO₂ electrodes. We will present a detailed electrochemical analysis of the fabricated flexible supercapacitors to underline their capacitive behavior. Our results reveal the potential use of the Ag nanowire/MoO₂ nanocomposites in flexible supercapacitor electrodes that can be fabricated through simple solution based methods and the method investigated herein can be simply adapted to industrial scale fabrication.

Portable and foldable electronic devices had been shown to be highly desired in the current life and further dominate the future life. To this end, it becomes critically important to develop matchable energy storage systems such as electrochemical supercapacitors to power them. The supercapacitor should be lightweight, flexible and stretchable, and could be easily integrated with high performances. However, the available supercapacitors typically appear in a heavy and rigid plate which cannot meet the above requirements. Herein, novel supercapacitor fibers in a coaxial structure have been developed from aligned carbon nanotube fiber and sheet which functioned as two electrodes. The unique coaxial structure enables a rapid transportation of ions between the two electrodes with a high maximum discharge capacitance of 59 F/g, and the high electrochemical performance has been well maintained at high currents.

Structural energy storage materials combining load-bearing mechanical properties and high energy storage performance are desired for applications in wearable devices or flexible displays. Vanadium pentoxide (V₂O₅) is a promising cathode material for possible use in flexible battery cathodes, but it remains limited by poor lithium-ion diffusion coefficient and electronic conductivity, severe volumetric changes during cycling, and limited mechanical flexibility. Here, we demonstrate a route to address these challenges by blending a diblock copolymer bearing electron- and ion-conducting blocks, poly(3-hexylthiophene)-block-poly(ethylene oxide) (P3HT-b-PEO), with V₂O₅ to form a mechanically flexible, electro-mechanically stable hybrid battery cathode. V₂O₅ layers were arranged parallel in brick-and-mortar-like fashion held together by the block copolymer binder. This unique structure significantly enhances mechanical flexibility, toughness and cyclability without sacrificing capacity. Properties are probed as a function of composition using dynamic mechanical analysis, impedance spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry, and galvanostatic cycling. It is found that optimum composition exists, where too little polymer results in brittle inflexible electrodes and too much polymer reduces the electrochemical activity. Only 5 wt % polymer is required to triple the flexibility (normal strain) of V₂O₅, and electrodes comprised of 10 wt % polymer have unusually high toughness (293 kJ/m³) and specific energy (530 Wh/kg), both higher than reduced graphene oxide paper electrodes. These results demonstrate a new approach for the development of structural energy storage materials.

Recently, binary and ternary composites have been widely reported by integrating multiple components, which could overcome the limitations of each individual and improve their electrochemical performance. Thus, developing efficient assembled electrodes with rational design are important for supercapacitors with good properties. Carbon cloth (CC), an inexpensive and highly conductive textile with excellent mechanical flexibility and strength, holds great promise for fabrication of flexible and freestanding electrode for energy device from the design and packaging perspectives [1]. In addition, the three-dimensional porous structure of CC is expected to facilitate the diffusion of electrolyte into the electrode material and provide more channels for rapid ion transport.
Here, two types of ternary composites were fabricated by reversing the deposition sequence of polyaniline (PANI) and MnO₂ layers on plasma treated carbon cloth (m-CC), i.e., PANI@MnO₂@m-CC and MnO₂@PANI@m-CC. By comparison, PANI@MnO₂@m-CC displayed a unique porous structure, significantly different from either the petal-like MnO₂ nanostructures or PANI nanorods. The morphological transformation of MnO₂ petals into nanoparticles while anchoring PANI nanorods increases the interactions between the two pseudoactive materials. With a rational deposition process, PANI@MnO₂@m-CC possessed a higher areal capacitance of 421.6 mF/cm² at 0.2 mA/cm², a better rate performance (58.9% retention with current densities from 0.2 to 2 mA/cm²) than and a comparable cycling stability (a capacitance of 86.5% after 5000 cycles) to that of MnO₂@PANI@m-CC. Moreover, an asymmetric supercapacitor was fabricated by using PANI@MnO₂@m-CC as the positive electrode and activated microwave exfoliated graphite oxide (‘a-MEGO&’) @m-CC as the negative electrode. The asymmetric supercapacitor showed a maximum energy density of 33.9 Wh/kg (at a power density of 319.0 W/kg) and power density of 17.2 kW/kg (at an energy density of 14.3 Wh/kg) at an operating voltage of 2.0 V. Our results indicate that a promising electrode candidate for supercapacitor of PANI@MnO₂@m-CC could be obtained with a rational design of each component, which is instructive to fabricate binary or ternary composites for energy storage devices. [1] P. Yu, Y. Li, X. Yu, X. Zhao, L. Wu and Q. Zhang, Langmuir, 2013, 29, 12051-12058.

A simple but effective method has been described to produce 3D composite thin films of 2D layered MoS₂ and reduced graphene oxide (rGO). Liquid crystal dispersions of large monolayer GO sheets have been produced via a modified Hammer process. Single to few layer MoS₂ dispersion were prepared by sonic assisted aqueous-phase exfoliation. Both 2D layered materials have been blended together to form composite thin films with excellent homogeneity and flexibility. The resulting films were reduced at 200 °C under vacuum to produce flexible conductive rGO-MoS₂ films. RAMAN analysis at different spots of the film confirms the presence of MoS₂ throughout the entire film, which is in good agreement with XRD data and SEM micrographs. The embedment MoS₂ layers between individual GO sheets was confirmed by cross-sectional SEM images of the films. The rGO-MoS₂ composite exhibits superior electrochemical performance with increased capacitance and cycling stability during the electrochemical performance test in aqueous electrolytes. This improvement of performance can be attributed to the embedding of MoS₂ sheets between rGO sheets that prevents restacking after reduction by acting as nano-spacer and produces an efficient electron transfer network. These results indicate the applicability of the novel composite film as a potential candidate for the high performance flexible supercapacitors.

We present a post synthesis self-assemble protocol that transforms the trillions of CNTs in powder form into densely packed flexible, robust and binder-free macroscopic membranes with hierarchical pore structure. The processing protocol has limited or no impact on the intrinsic properties of the CNTs. The binder-free CNT membranes could be as thin as < 10mm with mass density greater than that of water (1.0g/cc). As the thickness of the CNT membrane is increased, we observed a gradual transition from high flexibility to buckling and brittleness in the flexural properties of the CNT membranes. We correlate the mass of the CNTs to thickness of the CNT membrane. We have demonstrated the use of the CNT membranes as electrode in two-electrode 1M H₂SO₄ aqueous double layer supercapacitor that shows very high power density ~1040 kW/kg based on the mass of both electrodes and time constant of ~ 15 ms with no degradation in performance even after 10,000 cycles. Furthermore, we will show the designing of flexible 3-stack bipolar solid-state ultracapacitor and present results on energy/power densities, voltage, cyclability, temperature stability in relation to flexibility and weight. Preliminary results indicate high temperature stability >85^oC and CV voltage ~3V with very low leakage current ~ 10nA.

The development of portable electronics calls for new energy storage systems preferably in the form of biodegradable and environmentally friendly devices [1-3] as most electrochemical energy storage systems utilize toxic or scarce materials and thus need advanced waste disposal procedures. In this quest conducting polymers have been proposed as electrode material in batteries and capacitors due to their fast redox processes, high capacities, abundance and environmental friendliness [4, 5]. Conducting polymer based electrodes generally exhibit supercapacitive-like behavior including the possibility of rapid charge and discharge. The rapid self-discharge of these electrodes is, however, a problem [6] which can limit their range of application.
Composites of nanocellulose, derived from Cladophora sp. algae, and polypyrrole (PPy) can be used as electrode materials in environmentally friendly energy storage devices [7]. The PPy/cellulose composites, consisting of cellulose fibers with a diameter of ~30 nm coated by a ~50 nm thick layer of PPy, constitute porous materials with surface areas of ~80 m²/g. The thin PPy layer and the aqueous electrolyte present in the pores yield short counter ion mass transport distances enabling use of high charge and discharge rates. Symmetric energy storage devices with PPy/cellulose electrodes also exhibit capacitances of ~40 F/g (after normalization with respect to the weight of both electrodes) when operated at cell voltages up to 0.8 V.
The self-discharge rates of the PPy/nanocellulose based devices are known to be determined by an intrinsic activation controlled reaction for the positive electrode and oxidation of the negative electrode by residual oxygen [8]. The present study is aimed at suppressing the self-discharge rates and maximizing the useful cell voltage of these symmetric energy storage devices. The influence of oxygen, irreversible oxidation and the absolute potential of the oxidized PPy on the self-discharge rates are discussed. A symmetric PPy-based device, with appropriately balanced electrode weights, exhibiting 25% decrease in the cell voltage during 45 h after charging to 0.8 V is also demonstrated. As this self-discharge rate is significantly lower than the previously reported values the results are indeed very promising.
[1] P. Simon, Y. Gogotsi, B. Dunn, Science, 343 (2014) 1210.
[2] Y.H. Jung, T.-H. Chang, H. Zhang, C. Yao, Q. Zheng, V.W. Yang, H. Mi, M. Kim, S.J. Cho, D.-W. Park, Nature Commun., 6 (2015).
[3] M. Armand, J.M. Tarascon, Nature, 451 (2008) 652.
[4] P. Novák, K. Müller, K. Santhanam, O. Haas, Chem. Rev., 97 (1997) 207.
[5] J.R. Heinze, B.A. Frontana-Uribe, S. Ludwigs, Chem. Rev., 110 (2010) 4724.
[6] B.E. Conway, Electrochemical Supercapacitors, Plenum, N.Y., 1999.
[7] G. Nystro#776;m, A. Razaq, M. Stroslash;mme, L. Nyholm, A. Mihranyan, Nano Letters, 9 (2009) 3635.
[8] H. Olsson, M. Sjödin, E.J. Berg, M. Stroslash;mme, L. Nyholm, Green, 4 (2014) 27.

The importance of large-scale flexible Li-ion battery (LIB) is realized by the emergence of new markets for innovative electronic structures that demand thinness and flexibility. However, flexible LIB requires high areal and volumetric capacities in order to make it practical for energy storage application. Here we report the use of highly flexible 3-dimensional (3D) free-standing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as an electroactive anode material to enhance the areal and volumetric capacities. The 3D free-standing CNTs is transferred to a flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film demonstrating the open circuit voltage (OCV) of around 3V after being flexed. The average specific and volumetric capacities of 3D free-standing CNTs in a coin cell deliver 246 mAh g^-1 and 192 mAh cm^-3 at 1C, respectively. Our results from the 3D free-standing CNTs exhibit twenty times higher specific capacity and four times higher volumetric capacity than the 3D CNTs on Cu. These findings may provide significant advances in the performance and feasibility of large-scale flexible LIB based electronic devices.

The rising demand for flexible, lightweight and high-efficiency electrostatic capacitors for energy storage in applications such as electric vehicles, directed energy and portable electronics has opened up new avenues for research and development of insulating dielectric materials. Polymer films are widely used as the dielectric material in capacitors due to their flexibility, processability and higher operating voltages as compared to alternative ceramic insulators. However, further improvements in energy storage density of capacitors over current achievable values are reliant on increasing the permittivity (ε_r) and/or the breakdown strength (E_BD) of the dielectric material. Experimental and simulation studies have shown that the presence of barriers within the dielectric can significantly enhance the E_BD by hindering electrical field propagation via treeing phenomena. In this regard, laminated multilayered co-extruded polymer films have shown much promise for higher energy storage by forestalling electrical treeing via the 'barrier effect'. Motivated by this concept of the ‘barrier effect&’, we demonstrate a new approach to multi-layered polymer film dielectrics using self-assembling lamellae-forming diblock copolymer (BCP) films. Directed Self-Assembly (DSA) via Cold-Zone Annealing-Soft-Shear (CZA-SS) is applied to lamellae-forming BCP&’s cast on flexible substrate to obtain highly ordered multilayered structure with parallel (to substrate) orientation of BCP layers in micron thick films, as confirmed by GISAXS, Neutron Reflectivity and cross-sectional TEM. The highly ordered, parallel oriented BCP films exhibit a ~50% enhancement in E_BD over as-cast films with non-oriented single-phase morphology. We attribute this increase to the presence of highly aligned multiple interfaces within the film, perpendicular to the applied field, which act as barriers to electrical treeing breakdown. Interestingly, the E_BD of ordered BCP is even higher than each of the individual blocks comprising the BCP, which indicates that the breakdown is sensitive to the nanostructure within the film. Given that the theoretical energy storage density scales as square of E_BD, our concept of DSA aligned BCP&’s for nanostructured dielectrics provides a new nanomaterial paradigm for designing high breakdown strength, high energy density electrostatic capacitors.

Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) based electrode materials for supercapacitors are prepared using a catalyzed vapor-phase polymerization (VPP) method. Low-cost carbon deposited aluminum foil and micro-pore structured polymer are employed as the substrates for the VPP process. The high electrical conductivity of PEDOT provides for rapid and stable power storage per gram at room temperature, and the carbon materials enhance the performance of the supercapacitors by decreasing the internal resistance. The chemical composition, surface morphology and electrical properties are characterized by Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and conducting atomic force microscopy (C-AFM). To evaluate the electrical performance, a series of electrical measurements including cyclic voltammetry (CV), charge-discharge (CD) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy are carried out on symmetric supercapacitor cells with two-electrode configuration. The processing temperature of VPP shows a significant effect on PEDOT morphology, the degree of orientation and its electrical properties. The relatively high temperature leads to high specific area and large conductive domains of PEDOT layer which benefits the capacitive behavior greatly according to the data presented. This research provides the feasibility of low-cost supercapacitor fabrication and new insights into the application of organic conducting polymers to supercapacitor electrodes.

Ferroelectric ceramics have been widely used for multilayer ceramic capacitor design as it has a low cost,high dielectric constant, and polarization values. However, its low breakdown field (~400 kV/cm) is preventing its use in energy storage applications. At the other end of the property spectrum, polymers have a low dielectric constant but high breakdown strength. The obvious solution is to composite the two materials together, utilizing the best of both materials. However, in practice this has been difficult to obtain, with the addition of nanoparticle leading to a drastic reduction in breakdown strength of the polymer. The issue lies at the interface between ceramics and polymers which is natural incoherent, creating an array of defects. Through modifying the interface these defects can be eliminated. This can be done in a number of ways including polymer grafting, surface hydroxylation, or direct nanoparticle bonding into the polymer matrix. All methods require some degree of modification to the surface of the ceramic nanoparticle. All methods rely on smoothing the transition from low dielectric constant material to high dielectric constant material in order to prevent charge concentration effects and the appearance of defects at the interface that act as a low breakdown materials. The following paper will discuss the ways in which the three approaches of hermetic sealing of the nanoparticle within the polymer matrix. The general effects of the chemical interactions and the macroscopic effect on material properties will be discussed. Through use of hermetic sealing, the breakdown strength can be increased by a factor of 1.5 leading to a near tripling in energy density.

A series of flexible composite electrodes were fabricated by template-assisted electro-depositing of hierarchical nickel-cobalt hydroxide nanosheets @ hollow microrod arrays (NCHSs @ HRs) on carbon fiber cloth (CFC) for high-performance supercapacitors. Among various of nickel and cobalt components studied, N1C1HSs@HRs showed the best electrochemical capacitance of 2.3 F/cm2 at 2 mA/cm2, while 97% of its initial capacitance was remained after 5000 cycles. Moreover, with the increase of current density from 2 to 50 mA/cm2, the capacitance decreased less than 15%, demonstrating an excellent rate capability.Owing to the environmental friendly, easy controlling and low cost fabricating process, the obtained hierarchical nickel cobalt nanosheets @ hollow microrod arrays with outstanding capacity demonstrates itself as one of the most attractive candidates for supercapacitor.

Polymer-ceramic composites for energy storage have proven to be a promising research topic recently, with the natural appeal coming from the combination of their the components' different strengths: high breakdown for from polymers and high dielectric constant for from ceramics. Since the energy density is a product of these two properties, Ccombining these two typepolymers with ceramicss of materials would therefore be an obvious way to enhance the overall energy density of a dielectric capacitor dielectric. This has proven to be difficult in practice for a number of reasons;, most prominently being that the interfacial defecteffects between the ceramic additives and the polymer matrix create a region of low breakdown material and a center for charge concentration. We demonstrate in our current work several strategies for nanoparticle functionalization that have minimized this interface effect, including multi layered functionalization and highly oriented functionalizations.[BCR1] Computer modelling combined with experimental feedback from post-mortem FTIR analysis has given us a thorough understanding of this how the interface between particle and matrix effect the dielectric breakdownproblem. Specifically we have studied a composite of barium lanthanum titanate nanoparticles and polyvinal fluoride (PVDF) with chloro-trifluoroethylene (CTFE) and hexafluoropropylen (HFP). Our nano-scale understanding has allowed us to best the highest energy density composites currently available (>30 J/cm³). We will discuss future work (based on our computer model) that will be able to take energy density greater in these composites to an order of magnitude greater to where they are today.
[BCR1]you should go into what methods we used. remember that the conference in is November so don't stretch too far.

Metal hydroxide, especially nickel hydroxide, has been recognized as a good supercapacitor material due to its high energy output, but the poor rate capability and stability limit the application in energy storage. In contrast, graphene nanowall, developed in our previous work, shows excellent power performance yet poor energy output. In this study, we combine metal hydroxide and graphene nanowall to fabricate a novel electrode material. The microstructures of metal hydroxide/graphene nanowall nanocomposites were characterized by transmission electron microscopy, scanning transmission electron microscopy, and electron dispersive X-ray elemental mapping analysis. The sheet like metal hydroxide is laid on the Bessel plane of graphene nanowalls, which leads to an excellent electrical contact. By combining the ultrahigh energy output of metal hydroxide and the conductive graphene nanowall, the composite electrodes can achieve higher specific capacitance values (990 F g^-1 ) than those of pure carbon electrodes (215 F g^-1 ), and maintain their superior rate capability as well as long term stability (over 90% retention at 10000 cycles) in KOH solutions. The detail study on the synergistic effect between metal hydroxide and graphene nanowalls was conducted by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and Raman spectroscopy, and it shows that the phase transformation of metal hydroxide can be inhibited by introducing graphene nanowalls. By using metal hydroxide and graphene nanowalls, the asymmetric supercapacitors can achieve energy density and power density of 20 Wh kg^-1 and 20 kW kg^-1, respectively.

Development of transparent electrodynamic screens (EDS) printed on ultrathin flexible glass film substrates for retrofitting on solar panels and solar mirrors to perform self cleaning function is presented. Large-scale solar plants are generally installed in semi-arid and desert areas where dust layers build up on solar collectors causes major energy-yield loss. Maintaining designed plant capacities requires more than 90% reflectivity for CSP mirrors and 90% transmission efficiency for PV modules. Both types of solar collector must be cleaned at a frequency that depends on the rate of dust deposition. Because of scarcity of water in these regions, there is a need for a cleaning method that drastically reduces or eliminates water and labor costs and allows large-scale solar plant operation with water conservation. An EDS consists of rows of interdigitated, transparent conducting parallel electrodes embedded within a flexible ultrathin glass film and an optically clear film used for retrofitting on the surface of solar collectors. When the electrodes are activated by phased voltages, the dust particles are first electrostatically charged, then repelled and removed from the surface of the solar collectors. We present here a method of roll-to-roll production of EDS film and their application for self-cleaning function restoring transmission efficiency greater than 95% and reflection efficiency more than 90%. The electrodes of EDS are either made from silver nanowire or silver paste printed on a highly transparent, ultrathin (100-mu;m thick), flexible glass film. The back surface of the glass film/electrode structure is laminated onto the surface of an existing mirror/solar panel using an optically-clear adhesive film. The front surface of the ultrathin glass faces the sun and provides protection against scratches, sand abrasion, and moisture ingress. The flexibility of the EDS film makes it suitable for affixing on flat or curved solar collectors such as parabolic trough, heliostats and Fresnel lenses. Applications of different conducting transparent electrodes and methods of printing are reviewed for optimizing self-cleaning function of solar panels and mirrors.

Energy harvesting from radio frequency (RF) fields provides an opportunity for building wireless, autonomous power systems. Printed, flexible RF harvesters based on gravure printed organic diodes have been demonstrated, and integrated into harvesting and storage systems for autonomous electronics [1]. Although the performance of printed organic diodes is not yet sufficient to efficiently harvest ambient RF at very low (typically in few tens of uW/cm³ range) energy or at frequencies such as GSM, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, there are use cases for directed energy harvesting, e.g. for rechargeable devices. We have demonstrated the use of a 13.56 MHz RFID reader system as a dedicated source in References 1 and 2.
In recent years, low frequency near field charging systems using various standards including Qi with operating frequencies between 80 and 300 kHz have become widely used for charging of portable devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs. Compared to RFID readers, these chargers are more widely available and lower in cost, thus a promising option for directed energy harvesting. Here, we present a roll-to-roll compatible rectenna circuit composed of a loop antenna and an organic rectifying circuit on a credit card size substrate operating at Qi frequency range. The system takes full advantage of the excellent ac performance of the printed organic diodes at kHz range. In addition, the unique effects of organic didoes on both the 13.56MHz and the Qi frequency systems are addressed and compared. The measurement results show that the geometric capacitance of the organic diodes could function as the tuning capacitor for the 13.56MHz system while in the Qi system an additional capacitor is needed. Besides, we investigate flexible antenna design for both systems using different deposition methods such as ink-jet and copper etching to obtain optimal coupling voltage. The benefits and drawbacks of both systems utilizing organic rectifying circuit are presented.
Keywords: printed organic diode, organic RF harvester, organic rectifying circuit, Qi compatible
[1] Suvi Lehtimäki, Miao Li, Jarno Salomaa, Juho Pörhönen, Antti Kalanti, Sampo Tuukkanen, Petri Heljo, Kari Halonen, Donald Lupo. Performance of printable supercapacitors in an RF energy harvesting circuit. International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems 58 (2014), 42-46. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijepes.2014.01.004
[2] Miao Li, Petri Heljo, Donald Lupo. Organic rectifying diode and circuit for wireless power harvesting at 13.56 MHz. IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, vol. 61, no. 6, pp. 2164-2169, June. 2014.

The target of this study is to find the appropriate materials as additives for the formation or dissociation of methane or carbon dioxide hydrate. These hydrates are used for either natural gas energy sources or for carbon dioxide sequestration. The dissociation conditions for gas hydrates in the presence of additives at various concentrations in aqueous solutions were experimentally measured in this study. These additives include alcohols, cyclic ethers, or cyclic ketones. Hydrate phase dissociation conditions were measured with an apparatus which was operated at high pressure and low temperature conditions. The liquid water-hydrate-vapor (Lw-H-V) three-phase dissociation temperatures and pressures for methane hydrate in the presence of additives were determined by employing the isochoric method. New experimental data were reported within the pressure range from 4 to 15 MPa. It is demonstrated that the addition of certain additives in gas hydrate system shifted the original hydrate phase boundaries to lower pressure and higher temperature. The hydrate stability region was broadened, therefore it has a promotion effect on the formation of gas hydrate. Other additives might show inhibition behavior. These promotion or inhibition effect is also investigated by the possible hydrate structures in cases of various additive materials. The determination of gas hydrate structures is calculated using the Clausius-Clapeyron equation and the experimental measured dissociation temperature and pressure data.

In this talk, I will discuss new polymers we have been developing for high performance solar cells and thermoelectrics. We also developed a variety of functional polymers for lithium ion battery applications.

Flexibility, compliance and weight will turn out to be key metrics for future electronic appliances and power supplies[1]. Imperceptible electronics[2] integrates nanometer thin film active components on sub-2-mu;m polymer foils and creates devices unmatched in mechanical flexibility, stretchability and weight. Organometallic halide perovskites are capable of delivering very high power-per-weight when fabricated on ultrathin substrates, an important metric for wearable and ultraportable electronics, for remote sensing or for space applications.
Here we demonstrate methods to fabricate perovskite solar cells on 1.4mu;m thick PET substrates with 12% stabilized power conversion efficiency and a record-high solar cell power-per-weight of 26W/g. The solar cells are less than 2mu;m in total thickness, can be bent into radii smaller than 50mu;m and become stretchable to 100% tensile when sandwiched onto a pre-stretched elastomer. Our devices are fabricated from solution in ambient air at temperatures below 120°C to ensure process compatibility with ultrathin polymer foil substrates. Their unique mechanical properties are achieved with an all ITO/FTO free device architecture that does not require titanium oxide interlayers and avoids high sintering temperatures typically employed for rigid devices on glass substrates. Our low cost power sources operate in ambient atmosphere, conform to arbitrary shapes and provide electrical energy wherever high power-per-weight is critical, as in next generation ultra light portables, wearables, small-scale autonomous robots, unmanned areal vehicles and space exploration. The fabrication techniques and materials engineering approaches discussed here culminate in efficient, ultrathin, light and durable solar foils with record-high power-per-weight, mechanical flexibility, and prolonged outdoor operational stability.
The authors acknowledge funding from the FWF Wittgenstein award and the ERC advanced investigators grant “Soft Map”.
[1] M. Kaltenbrunner et al., Nature Communications 3, 770 (2012)
[2] M. Kaltenbrunner et al., Nature 499, 458 (2013)

We developed a facile interfacial oriented growth and self-assembly process to fabricate three-dimensional (3D) aligned mesoporous iron oxide nanopyramid arrays (NPAs). The unique NPAs possess a 3D mesostructure with multiple features, including high surface area (sim;175 m2/g), large pore size (sim;20 nm), excellent flexibility (bent over 150 times), and scalability at the foot scale for practical applications. More importantly, these NPAs structures enable versatile enhancement of localized surface plasmon resonance and photoelectrochemical conversion. The integration of plasmonic gold with 3D NPAs remarkably improves the performance of photoelectrochemical conversion, leading to sim;6- and 83-fold increases of the photocurrent under simulated solar and visible-light illumination, respectively. The fabrication and investigation of NPAs provide a new paradigm for preparing unconventional mesoporous oriented thin films and further suggest a new strategy for designing plasmonic metal/semiconductor systems for effective solar energy harvesting.

The surest strategy to promote organic solar cells (OSCs) from laboratory-scale demonstrations to use in the real world is to exploit the advantages possessed by organics that would be difficult or impossible to replicate in more-efficient competing technologies. Such advantages include low cost and embodied energy, extreme thinness, tunable color, biodegradability, semitransparency, extreme flexibility, and stretchability. These characteristics suggest that portable power for displays, mobile health monitoring devices, and mitigation of climate change triggered by burning of biomass in the developing world are—far from applications dismissible as “niche”—important problems for which organic solar cells may provide the ideal solutions. In an effort to understand and anticipate routes of mechanical and photochemical degradation for all-organic solar cells under realistic operating conditions, we fabricated the first organic solar cells that can be mounted on and conformed to human skin and used them to power wearable devices in the outdoor environment. These devices build on our team&’s work on determining the molecular and microstructural parameters that permit co-optimization of efficiency and mechanical robustness in organic semiconductors. In particular, this device was enabled by three critical modifications to a “typical” organic solar cell, including the use of a semiconducting thermoplastic elastomer poly(3-heptylthiophene) as the hole transporter, an intentionally unseparated mixture of soluble derivatives of C₆₀ and C₇₀ as the electron transporters, and anodes and cathodes based on the transparent conductive polymer PEDOT:PSS that were highly plasticized using a fluorinated surfactant. These devices produced ~2 mW cm^-2 in direct sunlight (~1-10 µW cm^-2 in room lighting) and could survive significant mechanical deformation (1,000 cycles of 75% compressive strain).

Since the seminal Nature paper by O&’Regan and Grätzel in 1991 [1] the highest efficiencies of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC) have been achieved using the iodide/tri-iodide redox system. A disadvantage of this mediator is the large internal losses caused by the fact that it is a two-electron redox couple. In 2010 we made a breakthrough by using one-electron transfer redox systems such as cobalt-complexes, in combination with a new generation of organic dyes, which efficiently prevents recombination losses [2]. This discovery was quickly embraced by Grätzel and co-workers, and the new world record for DSC is at present 13.0% by using a Co-complex redox couple and a porphyrin [3]. Our focus now is to develop high efficiency DSC utilizing different colors such as blue, green, yellow and red aiming for aesthetically attractive applications in for example building integration.
Besides liquid DSC we develop solid-state DSC (ssDSC). In one configuration, we prepare a conducting polymer by in situ photopolymerization of the monomers in a photoelectrochemical cell. ssDSCs based on an organic dye, D35, gives together with PEDOT or PEDOP as hole transporting material (HTM) efficiencies up to 7%. Recently [4], we showed that copper phenanthroline complexes in the solid phase can act as an efficient HTM. We prepared ssDSCs with the organic dye LEG4 and copper(I/II)-phenantroline as redox system and achieved power conversion efficiencies of more than 8%, with open-circuit potentials of more than 1.0 V.
The phenomenal breakthrough of the so called perovskite solar cells (PSC) originates from the ideas of replacing the dye layer adsorbed on the mesoporous oxide surface with an ultrathin inorganic perovskite layer and replacing the liquid electrolyte with a solid-state hole conductor [5, 6]. We will report on our latest work on optimizing the solar cell efficiency that at present is above 20% in our laboratories. We have developed new hole conductor materials that reach efficiencies similar to the conventional hole conductor spiro-OMeTAD but with the advantage of being more easily synthesized.
References
[1] B. O&’Regan, M. Grätzel, Nature, 353 (1991) 737.
[2] Feldt et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 132 (2010) 16714.
[3] Mathew et al. Nature Chemistry 6, 242-247 (2014)
[4] Freitag et al., Energy & Envir. Sci., DOI: 10.1039/C5EE1204J.
[5] Kim et al. Sci Rep-Uk, 2 (2012) 591.
[6] Lee et al. Science, 338 (2012) 643.

We use the photoferroic effect, a photovoltaic effect observed in ferroelectric materials, to demonstrate a mechanically flexible solid-state imager. This method for implementing solid state imaging electronics on flexible substrates could impact areas including conformable infrared detection, night vision, and medical imaging. For example, pyroelectric devices can be used as IR sensors for thermal imaging, but pyroelectric materials are difficult to implement on a flexible platform. Here we introduce a flexible imaging platform which utilizes the photoferroic effect, a photovoltaic effect observed in ferroelectric materials. When photons are absorbed by a ferroelectric material, electrons are excited to the conduction band. The electrons are separated from the holes by the intrinsic ferroelectric polarization, generating a photocurrent. The spatially resolved photocurrent from a pixelated ferroelectric surface can be employed for photoferroic imaging. The imager can be made mechanically conformable when utilizing a flexible, high quality ferroelectric material platform. Here, we demonstrate this mechanism by depositing a high-permittivity sputtered barium strontium titanate (BST) film upon a flexible stainless steel substrate. We discovered that, when this sample is annealed, the BST film is extrinsically doped by interdiffusion, with the effect that this doping converts the film from a paraelectric phase into a ferroelectric phase, realizing a flexible ferroelectric heterostructure. Ferroelectricity was confirmed by measurements of the dielectric constant in function of temperature, as well as of ferroelectric hysteresis. The photoferroic response of the flexible BST heterostructure was measured under illuminating light sources. The photocurrent under a simulated solar light source was found to be more than two orders of magnitude higher than the dark current. Furthermore, periodic irradiation with a 658 nm wavelength laser on the flexible BST film resulted in a consistent, periodic output current, verifying the photoferroic response. Most excitingly, using the spatially-coherent laser illuminating on spatially separated photodiodes on the flexible heterostructure, we demonstrated flexible photoferroic imaging. We showed that by rastering the laser and measuring the electrical response, a pattern corresponding to the laser trace can be precisely reconstructed by the recorded electrical response. These results illustrate, for the first time, a BST heterostructure for flexible photoferroic imaging, a promising mechanism for high-resolution imaging, with potential applications in conformable imaging arrays.

In this manuscript we present silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells manufacture on thin and flexible silicon wafers. Extensive work on organic and thin films deposited over flexible substrates aiming flexibility and high levels of integration is well known. However efficiencies are still relatively low. Using flexible, high efficiency, and cost effective solar cells would be an important breakthrough in portable applications, as well in building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV).We were able to roll down to 3.5 cm radius over 300 times silicon wafers with thicknesses 50 to 80 µm. The wafers were inspected using photoluminescence before and after rolling, and no evidence of mechanical damage (e.g. cracks) or degradation of the lifetime was found. In thin wafers surface passivation is particular relevant to mitigate the non-radiative recombination of the large number of minority charge carriers reaching one of the surfaces within their lifetimes. The SHJ solar cell architecture provides high quality passivation by using hydrogenated intrinsic amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) as buffer layer separating the absorber from highly recombination-active (ohmic) contacts. The cells were prepared on five-inch n-type Czochralski (CZ) wafers with 3-4 Omega;.cm resistivity and initial thickness equal to 145 µm. The wafers were thinned down and textured using alkaline wet etching, followed by wet chemical cleaning. The heterojunction was formed using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) to grow intrinsic and doped a-Si:H layers (7-15 nm) on both sides of the wafer, forming a ip/in stack. Hydrogen plasma treatment (HPT) was applied after growth of the intrinsic layer. Indium tin oxide (ITO) was sputtered on both sides and silver on the back. The front contacts were screen-printed. Efficiencies over 19% were achieved for 156 cm² and 50 µm thick solar cells.

Energy scavenging from surrounding environment such as vibration and sound became very demanding, since many other power generation methods are environmentally hazardous and requires high investment costs. Besides, the most of electronic devices are designed to be mobile and self-powered such as pace-makers, MEMS devices. Indeed, flexible electronic devices are also requires flexible self-powering systems. Therefore, highly efficient, portable, light weight and low cost energy harvesting devices play a crucial role to supply energy for low energy requiring mobile electronic devices. Recently, harvesting the waste energy using dielectric materials via triboelectricity became a promising technique. In the present study (Kanik et al., Advanced Materials, March, 2015), we built a multilayered triboelectric generator (MULTENG) using 3D printing technique, which can be actuated by acoustic waves, vibration of a moving car and motion because of its conformable and flexible structure. The layers of the triboelectric generator were made of polyetherimide nanopillars and polyethersulfone - As₂Se₃ chalcogenide core-shell fiber nanostructures produced using melt infiltration method and iterative size reduction technique, which is recently developed by our group (Yaman et al., Nature Materials, July 2011), respectively. We characterized wide range of materials to understand their triboelectric responses with respect to their chemical content. We concluded that increasing fluorine content in materials also increases their triboelectric response. In addition, we showed that inter-metallic semiconductor As₂Se₃ can be used as triboelectric material for the first time. Triboelectric performance of chalcogenide nanostructures can be enhanced by deposition of self-assemble fluorine monolayer on their surfaces. Our device can generate up to 396 V and 1.62 mA open circuit voltage and short circuit current, respectively. It can power 38 commercial LEDs, detect low frequency acoustic signal (10 - 100 Hz) and it can be excited with small vibrations in a moving car. With all these outstanding applications, MULTENG will be a great candidate as a power source for future electronic applications and it also can be used as a vibration and acoustic sensor.

Recently a new family of two-dimensional (2D) early transition metal carbides and carbonitrides, called MXenes, was discovered. MXenes are produced by selective etching of the A element from the MAX phases using acidic solutions containing fluoride ions. Unlike graphene, whose chemistry is restricted to carbon, MXenes allow a variety of chemical compositions and are establishing themselves as a new class of two-dimensional materials. MXenes combine the metallic conductivity of transition metal carbide layers with the hydrophilic nature of their mostly hydroxyl or oxygen terminated surfaces. In essence, they behave as “conductive clays” and have shown much of promise for electrochemical energy storage systems.
We explored the potential of MXenes as anode materials for Li-ion batteries and their use in electrochemical capacitors. We studied a range of MXenes with different chemistries and electrode architectures in lithium and sodium ion batteries, using both experimental and theoretical approaches.
We report on the intercalation of Li⁺, Na⁺, Mg²⁺, K⁺, NH₄⁺, and Al³⁺ ions between the 2D MXene layers. In most cases, the cations intercalated spontaneously. We show high capacitance up to 900 farads per cubic centimeter (much higher than that of porous carbons) of flexible Ti₃C₂T_x paper electrodes in aqueous electrolytes. We found that tuning of material surface chemistry can improve MXene capacitive performance. Several different electrochemical techniques were employed to understand the mechanism of charge storage.
This study provides a basis for exploring a large family of 2D carbides and carbonitrides in electrochemical energy storage applications using single- and multivalent ions. The high conductivity and mechanical strength of MXenes allows manufacturing of flexible devices that don&’t require the use of metal current collector.

To meet the requirements of the next-generation electronic industry, there is a strong need for the development of lightweight, flexible, inexpensive and environmentally-friendly high-performance electrodes for energy storage devices [1]. Contemporary functional electrodes for supercapacitors and batteries generally contain polymeric binders and metal substrates to increase the electrical conductivity and to obtain better physical contact between the active materials and the current collector [2]. As these additive materials do not contribute significantly to the electrochemical charge storage capacity, the development of free-standing, lightweight electrodes is becoming one of the key challenges.
Recent work has demonstrated that nanocellulose fibers can serve as promising building blocks, dispersing agents and binders in freestanding and flexible electrodes due to their versatile surface functionalities, high abundance in nature and well-established industrial use [3]. Electrodes composed of conducting polymers/nanocellulose composites can thus combine high conductivities with tunable mechanical properties which can be used to obtain lightweight and self-standing electrodes for organic lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors [4-6].
This presentation will divulge results of our recent research concerning the possibility of using nanocellulose fibers in the manufacturing of flexible and robust paper electrodes for sustainable supercapacitors/batteries. It will be shown that such devices can exhibit high electrode-normalized capacities even for high active mass loadings, and that this approach holds great promise for the fabrication of high-performance electrodes for flexible energy-storage devices.
References
[1] M. S. Whittingham, Chem. Rev. 2004, 104, 4271.
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Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanotubes have attracted major interest as electrodes materials for the elaboration of ultracapacitors with high specific capacitance and power compared to conventional Electronic Double Layer Capacitors (EDLC). Although theoretical studies predict very high capacitance for VACNT alone, their manufacturing process is still far from being competitive with classical EDLC. The idea to use cost-effective VACNT, made by atmospheric pressure CVD [1,2], serving as template for a host material with higher intrinsic capacitance than carbon and potentially producing flexible electrodes for supercapacitor devices is presented in this paper. For instance, Electronically Conductive Polymer (ECP) is known to exhibit high specific capacitance [3-5] for which a composite material is obtained through electrochemical polymerization which is performed on the VACNT structured substrate [4].
The aim of this article is to present the basic design of nanocomposite electrodes made from poly(3-methylthiophene) (P3MT) as ECP electrodeposited onto VACNT (see figure1). Stainless steel substrate is used both for the growth of VACNT by aerosol-assisted CCVD [1, 2] and as a standard collector for first developments and studies. The setups of CCVD deposition are first optimized to obtain well aligned, long and dense CNT carpets [2]. Then, the optimization of the electropolymerization parameters were conducted leading to controlled thickness of the ECP on the CNT acting as a template electrode. The homogeneity of P3MT coating in the depth of the carpet and on individual CNT, depending on several parameters (concentration, current density, galvanostatic profilehellip;) was studied after electropolymerization on VACNT carpets using both SEM coupled with EDX along the VACNT carpet cross section and TEM on individualized CNT. The spatial distribution of chemical elements, especially sulfur, demonstrates that P3MT is homogeneously distributed all along the VACNT carpet thickness and on the surface of each CNT [4]. Simulation studies will be presented that demonstrate the high potential capacitance and other achievable features with such a composite depending on VACNT carpet structure and ECP thickness. Finally, storage performances of the resulting nanocomposites will be reported and discussed based on electrochemical studies. The electrochemical performances of the nanocomposite in symmetric and asymmetric ultracapacitor push cells using ionic liquid based electrolytes will be reported and analysed in the context of industrial and commercial development ofco this technology based on nanostructured electrodes.
References
[1] M. Pinault et al., Nano Letters, 5 (2005) 2394,
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Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.

Solid-state gel electrolytes are compelling replacements for conventional liquid electrolytes in electrical energy storage applications due to their leakproof nature and robust flexibility. Furthermore, the volatility of common aqueous or organic solvent-based electrolytes may be overcome through the use of room temperature ionic liquids, which offer unique advantages such as: negligible vapor pressure, non-flammability, wide electrochemical window, and decent ionic conductivity. Here, flexible supercapacitor prototypes have been fabricated that incorporate activated carbon fabric electrodes and an ionic liquid immobilized by a polymer-based gel framework, thereby creating a nonvolatile composite electrolyte (ionogel) layer to fabricate an all solid-state device. Novel ionogel electrolytes were developed by rational selection of the chemical functionality of side groups present on the polymer backbone to enhance electrochemical performance. Compared to previously-studied ionogels that contain a poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) polymer scaffold featuring only methyl-based moieties, here we have introduced trifluoroethyl functional groups to create new highly fluorinated scaffolds via in situ free radical polymerization. Selection of the trifluoroethyl functionality was motivated by the increased polarity of the C-F bond that creates additional dipoles along the backbone of the polymer scaffold. Efforts of this work were focused on elucidating the effects of the fluorinated scaffold on ionic motion and ion pair dissociation of the ionic liquid and, thus, the resulting gel ionic conductivity. Diffusion measurements performed using pulsed-gradient spin echo nuclear magnetic resonance (PGSE-NMR) spectroscopy, coupled with AC impedance spectroscopy and elastic modulus characterization, yield a more comprehensive understanding of ionic motion and ion pairing in the PMMA- and poly(trifluoroethyl methacrylate) (PTFEMA)-based ionogels. In addition, ionic conductivity was measured as a function of temperature in order to provide insight into the dependence of the activation energy of ionic conductivity on the chemical nature of the polymer scaffold. Our results demonstrate an 87% enhancement of ionic conductivity by chemical modification of the polymer scaffold network (PTFEMA vs. PMMA) near the minimum gelation point, facilitating an increase in the power density of flexible supercapacitor prototype devices. It has been demonstrated that specific selection of the chemical identity of the polymer scaffold proves to have a substantial effect on the material properties of the gel electrolyte.

Energy storage devices that provide high specific power without compromising on specific energy are highly desirable for many electric-powered applications. Low energy density stored by the double layer of electrolyte ions at the surface of conducting carbon electrodes limits their practical implementation to specialty applications. Oppositely, batteries can store large amounts of energy yet with limited power. In this contribution, we will show that organic radical polymer-gel materials allow ultra-fast bulk-redox charge storage, commensurate to surface double layer ion exchange at carbon electrodes. When integrated with a carbon-based electrical double layer capacitor, nearly ideal electrode properties such as high electrical and ionic conductivity, fast bulk redox and surface charge storage as well as excellent cycling stability are attained. These hybrid carbon redox-polymer-gel electrodes support unprecedented discharge rate of 1,000C with 50% of the nominal capacity delivered in less than 2 seconds. Such extreme attributes are assigned to the intrinsic electrical conductivity, very fast redox reaction kinetics and high ionic conductivity within the electrolyte-swollen polymer matrix that spans through the entire composite electrode. The incorporation of high surface area carbon shows a double benefit: EDLC charge storage and electrical doping for enhanced charge collection. With minimal added manufacturing complexity, the flexible hybrid electrode displays almost two-fold specific capacity and energy increase as compared to the pristine EDLC electrode, while capable to maintain equivalent contribution of both components to the delivered charge at loads in excess of 100 A/g. The versatility of the employed materials allows various devices fabrication schemes including symmetrical and Li-ion capacitors, the latter verging the energy density of Li-ion batteries. Such approaches are safer than conventional inorganic batteries because they use non-flammable and transition metal free electrode materials, are adaptable to wet fabrication processes, easily disposable, flexible and can be fabricated via "green" chemical processes. Devices made with these flexible electrodes hold the potential for battery-scale energy storage while attaining supercapacitor-like power performances[1].
[1] A. Vlad et al., 2015 submitted.

Wearable electronics and microelectronics have been shown to be highly desired in the current and further life. To power these wearable electronic systems, flexible energy storage devices are needed. Comparing with the conventional planar device architectures, one-dimensional fiber micro-supercapacitors (FSCs) with the merits of lightweight, tiny volume, high flexibility and weavability which can be directly used as wearable components are more attractive. However, compared with batteries or traditional capacitors, FSCs show much lower-energy density and suffer from extra challenges in mechanical performance. According to the equation (E = 0.5CU²), energy is proportional to capacitance. So it is crucial to explore high capacitance fibers with good mechanical properties for FSCs.
Electric-double layer capacitors (EDLCs) store energy through the charge separation at the electrode/electrolyte interface. In our study, we try to increase the capacitance and energy density of EDLCs by increasing the fiber interfacial area. We adopt a simple pipe mold method to fabricate hollow RGO/PEDOT composite fibers and hollow pure RGO fibers (labeled as HCFs and HPFs) with excellent flexibility and conductivity. Furthermore, the hollow fibers show a dramatic charge-storage ability. The symmetric solid-state FSCs composed of two HCFs reveal a high specific areal capacitance of 304.5 mF cm-2 at 0.08 mA cm-2, corresponding to an ultra-high energy density of 6.8 µWh cm-2 at a power density of 16.6 µW cm-2. To the best of our knowledge, it is the highest record for FSCs to date.
In this presentation, we will discuss the fiber formation mechanism, charge storage mechanism and we will display the flexible wire-shaped energy device constructed by the one-dimensional fiber micro-supercapacitors.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the Startup Foundation of China Academy of Engineering Physics, Institute of Chemical Materials (KJCX201301 and KJCX201306), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21401177 and 51403193 ), the “1000 plan” from the Chinese Government, and the R&D Foundation of China Academy of Engineering Physics (2014B0302036).

We demonstrated a facile solution method for direct growth of mesoporous carbon-coated nickel nanoparticles on conductive carbon blacks (CCBs) treated carbon fibers (CFs), using an oleate-assisted deposition/calcinations process. The obtained composite has a uniform Ni core of ~5 to 10 nm, and a carbon surface layer of ~2 nm, which avoids aggregation and pulverization of inner nanoparticles and serves as a protective layer of Ni cores from dissolution during electrochemical reactions. In addition, the oleate decomposition during calcination leads to the formation of mesopores, which enable sufficient interaction between electrolyte and inner active materials and provides a high surface area of 71 m²/g for electrochemical reaction and efficient pathways for electrolyte diffusion. Moreover, the introduction of conductive carbon blacks to carbon fibers substrate significantly reduces the internal resistance and leads to enhanced electrochemical properties. These mesoporous carbon-coated nickel nanoparticles show a high capacitance of ~700 F/g at 1 A/g current density. The excellent cycling stability over repeated folding cycles for single electrodes and the mechanical stability of different twisted and bent states for solid-state active carbon (AC)//Ni@C asymmetric supercapacitors (ASCs) suggest they are potential candidates for flexible energy storage.

Although the printing of graphene has been proposed as an efficient method to fabricate flexible electronic devices, the inkjet method not only requires the graphene dispersed in certain ink with special viscosity, but also used surfactant to stable graphene. These requirements lead to the problems of mixed solvent and a process to remove surfactant. In this work, graphene was dispersed in a single solvent and printing without surfactant. By optimize the printing parameters, the sheet resistance and conductivity of the printed graphene patterns are smaller than the one from inkjet. This method has more potential for practical applications because of its simple, efficiency, and conductivity.

Indium tin oxide (ITO) is the most popular electrode material used for optoelectronic devices owing to its high transparency and high electrical conductivity. ITO, however, has several disadvantages such as intrinsic mechanical brittleness, due to its inferior ceramic-like properties, low chemical resistance in both acidic and alkaline environments, as well as the bulkiness and non-light weight ITO end-products. An ever increasing cost of ITO due to indium scarcity and the necessity for low temperature processing for flexible electronics have prompted the electronic industries to search for cheaper alternative material for flexible transparent conductors. In this presentation, the preparation method of highly conductive, flexible and transparent electrode for optoelectronic application will be presented. PEDOT/AgNW/GO composite has been prepared by using new technique to reduce the surface roughness and haze which are the main barriers for enhancing optoelectronic properties. We also will confer the stability in the electrical resistance of the film on PET as a function of bending angle and cycles in comparison with ITO on PET substrates. Organic photovoltaic parameters will be compared by using the as-prepared highly conductive thin film as transparent electrode for organic solar cells with conventional ITO electrode.

The development of ferroelectric capacitors is attracting increasing attention owing to their fast charge-discharge rate as well as superior mechanical and thermal properties compared to batteries, supercapacitors, and polymer capacitors. Recently, energy storage capacitor and power generation research focus has turned towards lead-free and environmentally-friendly dielectric BaTiO₃ based ferroelectric materials because of their high dielectric constant, polarization and piezoelectric properties. Novel materials with engineered architectures are essential for next-generation scalable capacitive energy storage to fulfill the demands of clean energy technology. Barium titanate and its variations are widely used in electrical applications especially in multilayer capacitor geometry, this is based on its high dielectric constant with low dielectric loss and high dielectric breakdown field which are essential for energy storage capacitor applications. CaTiO₃ is one of the most commonly used constituent in most of the commercial capacitors, whose exact role is not yet defined, however calcium minimize the thermal coefficient of dielectric properties of Z5U capacitors. With this motivation, (Ba_0.70Ca_0.30)TiO₃ (BCT) thin films of defined thickness were investigated in metal-ferroelectric-metal (MFM) capacitor configuration under high electric fields to evaluate their energy storage characteristics. Highly oriented thin films of BCT were fabricated on bare Pt(111)/TiO₂/SiO₂/Si and Al₂O₃/Pt(111)/TiO₂/SiO₂/Si substrates to compare the performances of Pt/BCT/Pt and Pt/Al₂O₃/BCT/Al₂O₃/Pt heterostructures and to investigate the contribution of the Al₂O₃ layers. The BCT (Al₂O₃) layers were pulsed laser deposited at 650 (300) °C under an oxygen partial pressure of sim;150 (10) mTorr, using a pulse repetition rate of 10 Hz. The thickness of the films was precisely maintained by controlling the number of laser shots. The crystal structure of the films was characterized using x-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman spectroscopy techniques. Studies on structural phase transition, ferroelectric, dielectric, leakage current, and energy-storage properties revealed the applicability of these thin film structures in future integrated high energy density capacitors. We will present the aforementioned properties and will discuss the intended energy storage applications of these thin film architectures in detail.

Due to high energy density, long cycle life, and no memory effect, lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries have been commonly used in electronic devices. Recently, flexible Li-ion batteries have attracted much attention because wearable electronic devices have emerged in the form of not only accessories like glasses but also fabrics or clothes. In this study, flexible microfiber battery electrodes for Li-ion batteries were manufactured by spinning electrospun nanofibers and subsequent thermal treatment. Poly(acrylonitrile) (PAN) containing silicon nanoparticles (or lithium iron phosphate nanoparticles for cathode) was electrospun into nanofiber webs. Then, the electrospun nanofiber webs were spun into microfibers by twisting and hot-strectching operations, finally followed by a calcination process to carbonize PAN. The microfiber electrodes were coated with gel polymer electrolytes by polymerization and soaking methods. The electrochemical characterizations of the microfibers including cyclic voltammetry and charge/discharge tests were carried out using freestanding microfibers without conducting additives or binders. The mechanical tests were also carried out to quantitatively characterize the flexibility and stiffness of microfiber electrodes. Detailed results of the electrochemical and mechanical tests including morphological and structural characterizations will be presented at the conference.

PVDF-based ferroelectric polymer nanostructures are of great interest due to their great potential in wide range of applications such as nonvolatile memories, organic electronics, energy storage, and solid-state energy harvesting and conversion. Previous researchers have used the conventional nanoimprint lithography technique with expensive hard molds pressed against PVDF-based polymer films at high pressure and raised temperature to produce high-density nanostructures on hard substrates. With the increasing application of ferroelectric polymer in flexible electronic technologies, fabrication of large area, uniform ferroelectric polymer nanostructures with very good ferroelectric properties on conductive flexible substrates will be a significant basis for a wide range of research and applications. Nevertheless, the conventional nanoimprint lithography processes with flexible substrate have series of problems such as weak adhesion, easy deformation, low melting temperature, which leads to low throughput and poor patterning quality. In addition, the conventional nanoimprint process often requires additional etching to remove a residual polymer layer between the imprinted structures, which may not be applicable for the flexible substrate due to their poor etching resistance.
Based on these considerations, we have developed low-cost polycarbonate and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) soft molds with no pretreatment necessary and used a low pressure reverse nanoimprint lithography procedure and fabricated large area, residual-layer-free P(VDF-TrFE) 2D nanograting and 3D nanoarray structures on Indium tin oxide (ITO) coated polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate. The 2D grating and 3D pillar arrays have high yield and uniformity, and showed very stable and switchable piezoelectric and pyroelectric response. The soft mold based low-pressure reverse nanoimprint lithography is a high yield and low cost method for fabrication of large area ferroelectric polymer nanostructures with very good ferroelectric properties on flexible substrates for flexible electronics applications.

Sulfonated aromatic polymers have been widely studied as membrane materials for fuel cell applications. To maintain high proton conductivity, aromatic polymers with superacid groups have been proposed. In this study, we synthesized two kinds of poly(phenylene)-based polymer electrolytes with perfluoroalkylsulfonic acid groups (SFPP) or benzenesulfonic acid groups (SPP) in order to investigate the effect of acidity on proton conduction under low humidity condition. We have also focused on block copolymers consisting of hydrophilic and hydrophobic segments. Introducing hydrophobic segments suppresses the decrease in mechanical properties under humidified conditions. We synthesized multiblock copolymers consisting of SFPP and poly(arylene ether ketone) (PAEK).
The volume-based ion exchange capacity (IECv) values of SFPP and SPP were 3.22 meq cm-3 and 4.09 meq cm-3, which were two times larger than that of Nafion® (1.75 meq cm-3). The proton conductivity of SFPP, which was measured by an impedance analyzer at 80°C and 30%RH, was higher than that of SPP despite the low IECv value. We employed the pulsed field gradient nuclear magnetic resonance (PFG-NMR) technique to measure the self-diffusion coefficient of water (DNMR) in these membranes. The DNMR values of SFPP and SPP were 4.55×10-11 m2 s-1 and 1.69×10-11 m2 s-1 at 30 °C and 30%RH, indicating that the acidity affected the mobility of water in the polymer electrolyte membranes.
The hydrophobic oligomer, dichloro-terminated poly(arylene ether ether ketone6H) (PAEK6H), was synthesized via nucleophilic acyl substitution. The weight-average molecular weight (Mw) of PAEK6H was 5.6 x 104 g mol-1. The polymerization degree of PAEK6H was calculated by 1H NMR to be 7. The sulfonated monomer, 3,5-dimethylpheny l-2-(4-(4&’-2,5-dichlorobenzoyl) phenoxyphenoxy)tetrafluoroethanesulfonateester (DFS-DPBP) was synthesized in five steps. DFS-DPBP and PAEK6H were polymerized via nickel-catalyzed coupling polymerization to obtain their copolymers (SF-6H). The Mw of SF-6H was 6.7 x 104 g mol-1.

The most important feature of a fuel cell is that it can directly convert chemical energy into electricity and achieve a high energy-conversion efficiency compared to conventional thermal power generation systems. Among all fuel cell types, solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are expected to realize the highest power generation efficiency. Although the efficiency of the already commercialized SOFCs system for the residential use in Japan is 46.5 %LHV as a catalog spec, they have reported to have the potential for higher-efficiency power generation. To realize higher-efficiency SOFCs, there are various approaches, and developing materials is important because it is highly flexible and easy to adapt to various types of SOFC stacks and systems. One of issues of enhancing the efficiency of SOFC cells is the conductivity decline of electrode materials because of the counter diffusion between the YSZ electrolyte and CeO₂ interlayer at cathode side.
In this study, we focused on the thickness of the highly resistive solid solution between the electrolyte and the interlayer formed during the manufacturing processes. We used a YSZ electrolyte and a CeO₂ based material interlayer such as LnDC (Ln=Y, Gd, La). We found that the dopants in CeO2 based materials affect the formation of high resistive solid solution of (Ce,Zr)O₂.
In the future work, we are planning to examine the dependency of diffusion behaviors at interface on the dopant concentration.
This research is supported by The Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) through its “Center of Innovation Science and Technology based Radical Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program (COI Program)."

Dielectric organic-inorganic nanocomposites are promising structures for electronic applications due to their special properties such as mechanical flexibility and high dielectric constant. High surface area to volume ratio and porous mesh with small pore size give the nanofibers specific properties and make them exhibit proper performance in some applications.
In this work, we present our results toward fabrication and characterization of nanocomposites fibers with potential applications as capacitors and energy storage devices. We used polyvinylidene fluoride-hexafluoropropylene P(VDF-HFP) as the organic phase. P(VDF-HFP) not only has high dielectric constant like other fluoropolymers, also possess high flexibility derived by its structure. Electrospinning as the best method for producing nanofibers with controlled morphology was chosen to make fibers out of polymeric solutions. Organic- inorganic composite nanofibers based on P(VDF-HFP) and Barium Titanate (BaTiO₃: BTO) nanocrystals with different BTO concentrations of 0, 2, 4, 6 and 8% were prepared by electrospinning process. Mechanical and structural properties were characterized by dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), scanning electron microscope (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). FTIR spectra of nanofibers showed high β phase fraction in polymer matrix of above 80%. However, by increasing the concentration of inorganic phase, β phase fraction and ability to form crystalline phase decreased. The existence of β phase was proved by XRD and the results demonstrated that nanoparticles are incorporated into the fibers structure. Ferroelectric properties, dielectric constant and dielectric loss of the samples were measured. The results showed the nanocomposite fibers can be used as flexible organic-inorganic capacitors with appropriate capacitance.

We present unique embedded double-layer structures of gold ribbons and silver nanowires in flexible polymeric substrates by using both micro-contact printing and galvanic displacement. A thin layer of n-paraffin (eicosane, C₂₀H₄₂) is firstly prepared on silicon (Si) substrates by a spin-coating method. Then a prism-type elastomeric mold is directly pressurized on the surface of n-paraffin layer to produce prism-type patterns of eicosane. In addition, uncovered Si surface that plays a role as electrodes to deposit gold layer via galvanic displacement is exposed between two prism-type patterns of eicosane. The prism-type patterns of eicosane is used to guide silver nanowires during evaporation of their suspending solvent, so that they are selectively deposited on gold layers prepared between two prism-type patterns of eicosane due to surface energy difference and height contrast. Sintering samples at 200 °C can remove n-paraffin and remain double-layer structures of gold ribbons and silver nanowires on silicon substrates. Finally, as a layer of poly(dimethyl siloxane) (PDMS) is cured on the samples and peeled off from the Si substrates, embedded double-layer structures of Ag nanowires and Au ribbons are successfully fabricated in flexible PDMS substrates. Electrical properties of the samples are also characterized by measuring relative change in resistances (ΔR/R₀) of the devices under various types of deformations like bending and stretching.

Polymer substrates are gaining a great interest because of its advantages such as light weight, flexible and scalable roll-to-roll preparation of electronic devices. However, some researchers have pointed out a lower film performance of transmittance and resistivity due to rough surfaces of the polymer surfaces scattering much more electrons and photons than the smoother substrates ^[1]. Meanwhile, nanopatterning and atomic scale surface modification of the polymer substrates could conquer the problem. So far we have demonstrated formation of the atomically stepped patterns onto soda-lime silicate glasses by thermal nanoimprint process; a transparent conductive oxide (TCO) film deposited on the nanopatterned glass revealed improved crystallinity and crystal orientation ^[2]. In this study, we investigated the effect of process conditions on precise transcription of various polymers and explored the application for developing functional films on these nanoimprinted polymers. Here, a sapphire (α-Al₂O₃ single crystal) wafer with structures of atomic stairs and flat step terraces was utilized as nanoimprinting molds, which atomic scale pattern was self-organized just by annealing a mirror polished sapphire wafer in air. The pattern was transcribed on polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA; Tg ~105°C) at 80°C to 140°C in air by thermal nanoimprint technique, which process is one of the most promising techniques for simple, low-cost, and high-throughput nanopatterning. The atomically stepped pattern on the PMMA surface was clearly proved by atomic force microscopy observation, that the RMS roughness was about 10 times smaller than that of an as-supplied PMMA surface ^[3]. The atomically stepped patterns on various polymer surfaces such as cyclic olefin polymer (COP), polycarbonate (PC), and polyimide (PI) was also obtained in this study. A conductive indium-tin-oxide (ITO) thin film, the most popular TCO material, was subsequently grown on the nanoimprinted glass substrates by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). The atomic steps would modify nucleation sites, and the ultra-smooth terraces should advance the oriented growth of crystals owing to fewer facets on the surface. The preciseness of the shape transfer in our atomic scale nanoimprinting process, and also the effect of atomic scale patterns on the structure and properties of functional films fabricated on the nanoimprinted polymer surface would be elaborated.
[1] J. S. Kim, J. W. Bae, H. J. Kim, N. E. Lee, G. Y. Yeom, K. H. Oh, Thin Solid Films377 (2000) 103.
[2] Y. Akita, Y. Miyake, H. Nakai, H. Oi, M. Mita, S. Kaneko, M. Mitsuhashi, M. Yoshimoto, Appl. Phys. Express4 (2011) 035201.
[3] G. Tan, N. Inoue, T. Funabasama, M. Mita, N. Okuda, J. Mori, K. Koyama, S. Kaneko, M. Nakagawa, A. Matsuda, M. Yoshimoto, Appl. Phys. Express7 (2014) 055202.

Polarization modulation-infrared reflection-absorption spectroscopy (PM-IRRAS) and neutron reflectometry (NR) of sulfonated poly[ether ether ketone] (SPEEK) on both Pt and SiO₂ surfaces facilitate development of advanced catalyst/ionomer interfacial models. SPEEK, compared to the premier fuel cell ionomer membrane Nafion, has a more environmentally-friendly hydrocarbon backbone and has not been reported to undergo Nafion's radical unzipping mechanism. PM-IRRAS, in conjunction with density functional theory-calculated normal mode analysis, enables determination of how ionomer functional groups self-assemble on surfaces. NR allows for the determination of ionomer layer thicknesses and phase segregation in ionomer thin films. Preliminary X-ray reflectometry suggests that the SPEEK spin coated onto SiO₂ surfaces forms a 2-layer ionomer structure. The top layer is less dense and thicker than the layer adjacent to the substrate. NR data of SPEEK on both Pt and SiO₂ has been obtained and is currently being fitted. Transmission FT-IR spectra of SPEEK at varying states-of-hydration show different water sorption properties versus Nafion, due to its shorter hydration channels and dead-end pathways. We expect this to lead to differences in polymer interfacial structures compared to those found for Nafion, including state-of-hydration and number of layers at the respective interfaces. PMIRRAS elucidates what effect the rigid, aromatic backbone will have on SPEEK self-assembly on both Pt and SiO₂.

In past couple of years, there has been a tremendous interest in werable devices for the purpose of health monitoring, activity tracking and communication. A number of wearable devices such as smart watches, health bands, smart clothings and eye wears are now available in the market. The sensors and ICs are fabricated using silicon technology and they use lithium ion batteries to power them. The batteries are speced according to the size and power requirements of the device. Batteries used in wearable devices are thick, bulky, and they occupy majority of space within the device. The next generation of wearable devices will be thin, soft and conformable to the human body. They will require a battery that is thin, flexible, and have similar form factor.
In this talk, we will discuss the design and fabrication of flexible lithium ion battery for powering a wearable blood oximeter sensor. The optoelectronic sensor is fabricated on a thin plastic substrate using additive manufacturing techniques. The sensor consists of a organic light emitting diode and photodiode for sensing the heart pulse and blood oxygenation level. The lithium ion battery is laminated with the flexible sensor, and includes circuitry to connect the battery to the sensor and wireless node. The batteries for wearble application should power the sensor for sufficient amount of time before recharging, and withstand repeated mechanical flexing without failure. We will discuss the electro-mehanical performance of the battery and demonstarate techniques for wireless charging of the battery.

Zinc oxide is a multifunctional material with a direct band gap of 3.37 eV and a high exciton binding energy of 60 meV; in addition, ZnO also has piezoelectric and pyroelectric properties due to its wurtzite structure, which is promising for applications in optics, electronics, optoelectronics, and photonics. One of the routinely used methods for ZnO nanostructure growth is the chemical bath deposition (CBD), which is a low-cost and straightforward process for large-area fabrication. Nonetheless, at the initial growth process, heterogeneous nucleation of ZnO on substrates competes with homogeneous nucleation of ZnO in the nutrient solution. The ZnO nuclei from the solution may easily attach to the substrate and continue to grow without preferred orientation. Therefore, uniform ZnO thin film growth on the substrate is difficult to produce, unless expensive sapphire or GaN substrates are used as the substrates. In order to increase the texture, and hence the quality, of the ZnO thin film, we modify the surface energy of the substrate by depositing a self-assembled monolayer of the methyl end group or by the methylation method. We recently find that highly (0001) textured ZnO thin films can be deposited on this surface-modified substrate with the van der Waals epitaxial growth. It therefore provides a potential method to deposit ZnO thin films on arbitrary substrates. Besides, the optical and electrical properties of ZnO thin films may be fine-tuned by adding dopant components in the growth nutrient.

Flexible transparent conductors with high performance are important for a variety of emerging devices such as flexible solar cells, light-emitting diodes, and flat-panel displays. We report a comprehensive study on the optical and electronic properties of hierarchical metal nanomesh (NM)/microgrid (MG) structures using both simulation and experiments to determine their performance as transparent conductors. The NM is fabricated using nanosphere lithography and the MG is fabricated using optical lithography, which are suitable for scalable fabrication. The NM helps deliver or collect carriers locally while the lower resistance MG transports carriers over larger distances. The structures exhibit high uniformity of optical and electronic properties.
Hierarchical Ag NM/Ag MG structures demonstrate 83% diffusive transmission at 0.7 Omega;/square when fabricated directly on quartz and 81% diffusive transmission at 0.7 Omega;/square when fabricated directly on flexible substrates. This corresponds to a direct current to optical conductivity ratio σ_dc/σ_op of 2900 and 2300, respectively. The haze factor of these structures may be tuned by modifying the NM hole diameter. Furthermore, the flexible hierarchical structures exhibit good durability under bending and heating.

Organic photovoltaics (OPV) and polymer solar cells, which include polymer semiconductor as active layer, are attractive for low cost, large-area manufacturing, flexible and light-weight solar cells. There are many reports using slot-die coating, doctor blading and spray coating as a manufacturing method for the active layer. However, by using these coating method, module design is restricted to stripe pattern. In order to manufacture not only stripe pattered module but also various shaped cell and module, we employed flexographic printing for fabrication of the active layer.
Typical cell structure is PEN film/ITO/PEDOT: PSS/active layer (p-type polymer: PCBM)/Al. We employed various p-type polymer (P3HT, PTB7, etc.). After connection of flexible connector to cell or module, we encapsulated the cell or module by using barrier-coated PEN films and epoxy resin. We evaluated the encapsulated cell and module. The efficiencies of the cell and module using flexographic printing on film substrate were relatively high values compared to those using coating process on film substrate.

Transition metal chalcogenides, also known as layered semiconductors, have shown immense potential in electronics and opto-electronics. Particularly, molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) has widely been investigated in sensors, filed effect transistors, solar cells and light emitting diodes. In this study, we investigate MoS₂-based polymer composites and their reversible mechanical responses to different wavelengths of light, including ultraviolet (UV), visible, near infrared (NIR), and infrared (IR). Samples were fabricated in two ways; as a homogenous mixture of MoS₂/Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) nanocomposites (0.1-5 wt%) and as a layer-by-layer structure of PDMS/MoS₂/PDMS (0.1-5 wt%). Actuation response of MoS₂ actuators is a function of applied pre-strains, and was studied for the pre-strain values from 1% to 70%. At lower levels of pre-strain (1-8%), the actuators show reversible expansion while at higher levels of pre-strain (9-70%), they show reversible contraction. The ratio of maximum stress due to photo-actuation (σ_max) at 50% pre-strain to the minimum stress (σ_min) at 1% pre-strain was found to be sim;315-322% for MoS₂ actuators, greater than single layer graphene (sim;188%) and multi-wall nanotube (sim;172%) photo-mechanical actuators. We observe that the photo-mechanical actuation process is highly sensitive to incident wavelength of the laser light due to the tunable optical bandgap of MoS₂. The UV photons generate maximum stress in the MoS₂-PDMS composite compared to visible, NIR and IR photons due to the higher energy. The NIR and IR photons are observed to pass through the samples by generating 10.67 and 9.305 kPa of stress in MoS₂ (for a pre-strain of 30%) as the bandgap is wider for such lower energy photons. However, the stress was observed to be 11.63 kPa for UV photons compared to NIR and IR photons. These tunable photo-mechanical response with respect to incident photons are attributed to the optical bandgap of the MoS₂ layers in PDMS.

Flexible composites of electroceramic particles in a polymer matrix are valued for easy, low temperature processing and good mechanical properties. However, their practical application is still limited since the electrical properties of such composites generally suffer due to limited connectivity of the electroceramic particles, especially at low ceramic volume fractions.
Composites with enhanced properties can be obtained by dielectrophoretic alignment of the particles during curing of the polymer matrix. This will be discussed for composites based on a variety of piezoelectric, pyroelectric and polymer materials.
Secondly, it is not sufficient to simply duplicate the composition of electroceramic particles which are already being used in ceramics, for piezoelectric composites. Typically, the compositions of piezoelectric ceramics are prepared close to the so-called morphotropic phase boundary to achieve good properties. It has been observed that for piezoelectric composites this is not always necessary, opening the way for development of new composite materials including new lead free piezoelectric composites.

With a constant increase in demand for energy, the ability to sustainably use energy is essential. Thermochromic smart windows intelligently modulate heat by transmitting infrared light when it is cold out to aid in indoor heating and reflecting or absorbing infrared light when it is hot out, to minimize necessary heating. This reduces costs and energy usage of indoor temperature control. Vanadium dioxide (VO₂) has been widely studied for this application due to its low temperature metal to insulator transition that is coupled with a change in IR transmittance. Previous VO₂ thermochromic window work has skirted the applicability issues that are essential: can we actually make these films in an industrial scale and can we retrofit these films onto pre-exisiting windows? This has been thwarted by the difficulty in synthesizing highly-crystalline VO₂ in a low-temperature, high-yield wet-chemical synthesis that does not require a substrate. Further, much of the performance is hindered by the thin-film morphology, which only has high IR modulation at low visible transmittances. Herein, photonic nanoparticles elastomeric colloidal films have been created, which are different in applicability, scalability and optical response from previous work. The performance of these films is dependent on the strength and placement of the photonic absorption peak of the metallic VO₂ nanoparticle, which can be tuned by size, shape and dielectric constant of the polymer matrix. Additionally, the elastomer matrix allows for fabrication on any substrate such as glass, flexible polymer or substrate-free, which opens up the ability to retrofit windows with thermochromic smart films. Low-temperature wet-chemical synthesis was achieved by converting synthesized vanadyl ethylene glycolate (VEG) to VO₂ through a controlled heating to 200 °C under ambient environment. The nanoparticles were combined with a dilute PDMS solution, sonicated, and drop cast onto various substrates (glass, flexible PET) in ambient conditions then further dried in an oven. In order to vary the IR modulation and visible transmittance percentages the thickness of films was varied by simply changing the solution volume cast onto substrates. This resulted in a maximum IR modulation of ~11% at a visible transmission of ~51%. A linear decrease in IR modulation with decreasing film thickness was observed with a minimum IR modulation of ~1% at a visible transmission of 96%. Temperature-dependent measurements of absorbance, reflectance and scattering indicate the changes in IR modulation to primarily result from the plasmon resonance of the VO₂ metallic phase. This analysis provides a detailed understanding of the optical properties of these novel films and a pathway toward high-performance thermochromics films for smart windows.

Wet chemical functionalization of Si(111) with trifluoromethyl molecules was performed to achieve notable differences in electrochemical behavior and wetting properties. Passivated surfaces were evaluated with X-ray photoelectron and grazing-angle attenuated total reflectance infrared spectroscopies. Microwave conductivity was used to measure charge carrier lifetime and quantify surface defects after different passivation methods. Differences in electrochemical properties such as band edge energetics will be discussed and compared to well-known functionalization routes utilizing a chlorination/Grignard reaction sequence.

Yarns having remarkable energy storage and energy harvesting capabilities can be made by a process called biscrolling, in which one or more multifunctional guests are overcoated on a nanofiber sheet, which is then twist-inserted to make either non-coiled or coiled yarn. The used highly-oriented nanofiber sheets are typically either carbon nanotube sheets that are drawn from carbon nanotube forests or electrospun sheets of polymer nanofibers. Despite having up to 95 wt% of guest trapped in the corridors of helically scrolled yarn, the biscrolled yarn can be weavable, braidable, sewable, knottable, and washable. Using this biscrolling process, and related processes, we here describe textiles and yarns that harvest glucose in human serum as electrical energy, provide high areal energy and power density redox supercapacitors or batteries, serve as low density superconducting wires, and function as torsional and tensile artificial muscles that can be thermally, electrically, chemically, electrochemically or light powered. The described work resulted from collaborations between the University of Texas at Dallas, Hanyang University, the University of Wollongong, and the University of British Columbia.

Harvesting mechanical energy of ambient or biomechanical vibrations could provide sufficient energy to power various devices. Typical mechanical energy harvesters can be realized with piezoelectric materials which exhibit natural electromechanical coupling.[1] But the piezoelectric materials have to be polarized at high temperature under a high voltage. This intervention makes their use difficult in autonomous and miniaturized systems. An alternative candidate can be electrostrictive polymers, which can be used to realize variable capacitors to harvest mechanical energy by changing capacitance upon deformation. However, most of the electrostrictive polymers suffer from low electromechanical coupling coefficient, i.e., limited permittivity variation in response to the applied strain.[2] Thus, the key to develop high-efficiency energy harvester is to largely improve the electrostrictive coefficient of polymers, while retaining their other excellent physical properties.
Herein, we prepared an electrostrictive nanocomposite composed of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) in soft polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) matrix. A versatile phase transfer method was employed to modify graphene oxide (GO) flakes and achieve stable suspensions in organic phases near thermal equilibrium. We find that, in contrast to rod-like particles, the competition of percolation and liquid crystal transition of platelike particles actually hinders the formation of conductive networks. This phenomenon would fundamentally change our views on the interest of graphene for conductive composites. Such competition can nevertheless be positively exploited to develop dielectric composites. The ordered liquid crystalline graphene structure is expected to promote the formation of effective microcapacitors to afford a very high relative permittivity (~2000). Moreover, the near percolated rGO/PDMS composite exhibits a large permittivity variation in response to small strain deformation, giving rise to a giant electrostrictive coefficient M= -4.3×10^-14 m²/V² at 0.1 Hz. This giant electrostriction, associated with low losses, places our materials well beyond the state of the art, [3] indicating that our materials are particularly promising for harvesting mechanical energy applications. Their implementation in actual electronic devices is currently investigated.
References
[1] Toprak A, Tigli O. Piezoelectric energy harvesting: State-of-the-art and challenges. Applied Physics Reviews. 2014;1(3).
[2] Zhang QM, Bharti V, Zhao X. Giant electrostriction and relaxor ferroelectric behavior in electron-irradiated poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) copolymer. Science. 1998;280(5372):2101-4.
[3] Lallart M, Cottinet P-J, Guyomar D, Lebrun L. Electrostrictive polymers for mechanical energy harvesting. Journal of Polymer Science Part B-Polymer Physics. 2012;50(8):523-35.

Flexible and portable energy devices have attracted extensive attentions from both academic and industrial communities, due to rapidly growing demand for matchable power system towards wearable electronics. Fiber-shaped energy devices have been developed with increasing interests attributing to their flexible, weavable and wearable features. However, fiber-shaped energy devices with more abundant functions and higher integration level are still needed to meet the requirement in practical applications. To this end, it is critically important while challenging to incorporate various functions into fiber-shaped energy devices to improve the integration and applicability, while maintains the high performance.
Here we have designed new functional fiber-shaped electrodes based on carbon nanomaterials to endow the fiber-shaped devices with magnetic response, energy conversion/storage and self-healable capacity. For example, we have developed dry-spun aligned CNT fibers as efficient electrodes to offer high mechanical strength and electrical conductivity. By twisting the above fiber with a electrode consisting of dye-adsorbed TiO₂ nanotube array, a single electronic device with dual functions, i.e., energy harvesting and storage, has been realized and used as an effective solar cell and electrochemical capacitor without sacrificing either performance, which provides high integration level, reduced fabrication cost and complexity in the development of energy materials and devices. In addition, a novel family of conducting wires that can self-heal after breaking has been developed based on aligned carbon nanotube sheet and self-healing polymer, aiming to extend the lifetime of fiber electrode. The aligned carbon nanotubes offer an effective self-healing strategy on the electrical property while the polymer fiber recovers the mechanical property. Self-healable fiber-shaped supercapacitors are further fabricated using the above fiber electrodes with high performances, and the discharge capacitance can be well maintained by 92% after cutting off and self-healing.
Related reference
1 Sun, H., You, X., Jiang, Y., et al. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2014, 53, 9526.
2 Sun, H., You, X., Deng, J., et al. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2014, 53, 6664.
3 Sun, H., Yang, Z., Chen, X., et al. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2013, 52, 8276.
4 Sun, H., You, X., Deng, J., et al. Adv. Mater., 2014, 26, 2868.
5 Sun, H., Che, R., You, X., et al. Adv. Mater., 2014, 26, 8120.
6 Sun, H., Deng, Z., Qiu, L., et al. Energy Environ. Sci., 2015, DOI: 10.1039/C4EE03853C.
7 Sun, H., Li, H., You, X., et al. J. Mater. Chem. A, 2014, 2, 345.
8 Sun, H., You, X., Yang, Z., et al. J. Mater. Chem. A, 2014, 1, 12422.
9 Yang, Z., Sun, H., et al. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2013, 52, 7545.
10 Sun, X., Sun, H., et al. Adv. Mater., 2013, 25.5153.

Complex three-dimensional (3D) structures in biology (e.g., cytoskeletal webs, neural circuits, and vasculature networks) form naturally to provide essential functions in even the most basic forms of life. Compelling opportunities exist for analogous 3D architectures in human-made devices, but design options are constrained by existing capabilities in materials growth and assembly. We report routes to previously inaccessible classes of 3D constructs in advanced materials, including device-grade silicon. The schemes involve geometric transformation of 2D micro/nanostructures into extended 3D layouts by compressive buckling. Demonstrations include experimental and theoretical studies of more than 40 representative geometries, from single and multiple helices, toroids, and conical spirals to structures that resemble spherical baskets, cuboid cages, starbursts, flowers, scaffolds, fences, and frameworks, each with single- and/or multiple-level configurations.

The proliferation of mobile and wearable devices has created a demand for flexible energy storage systems. Here we will report on the use of organic conductors as electrodes in such devices. Structures based on inherently conducting polymers, graphene and hybrids containing both materials have been developed. The challenge involving the creation of electrode structures with increased surface area while not compromising mechanical properties is significant but progress is being made. Equally important is the development of solid state electrolytes with appropriate mechanical properties. Here we illustrate how the use of ionic liquid and other organic polymers based materials is helping fill this void. Along with developments in the materials to be used thought must be given to the means of device fabrication and seamless integration into other structures. We will report on our use of novel printing protocols as well as fibre spinning, knitting and braiding to achieve this. Finally the need to standardise test protocols to allow quantitative comparison of new electrode materials and device configurations will be discussed.
Recent Publications
1. Chemically Converted Graphene: Scalable Chemistries to Enable Processing and Fabrication
Wallace, G., Gambhir, S., Jalili, R., Officer, D.
NPG Asia Materials 2015, 7, e186 (1-15).
2. Highly Conductive Carbon Nanotube-Graphene Hybrid Yarn
Foroughi, J., Spinks, G.M., Antiohos, D., Mirabedini, A., Gambhir, S., Wallace, G.G., Ghorbani, S.R., Peleckis, G., Kozlov, M.E., Lima, M.D., Baughman, R.H.
Advanced Functional Materials 2014, 24 (37), 5859-5865.
3. High-Performance Multifunctional Graphene Yarns: Toward Wearable All-Carbon Energy Storage Textiles
Aboutalebi, S.H., Jalili, R., Esrafilzadeh, D., Salari, M., Gholamvand, Z., Aminorroaya-Yamini, S., Konstantinov, K., Shepherd, R.L., Chen, J., Moulton, S.E., Innis, P.C., Minett, A.I., Razal, J.M., Wallace, G.G.
ACS Nano 2014, 8 (3), 2456-2466.

Recent developments concerning the fabrication of organic electronic devices on ultra-thin substrates (< 1 mu;m) has allowed researchers to develop conformable and mechanically robust devices that hold promise for applications that require such properties, including consumer electronics and medical diagnostic and monitoring devices.^[1,2] Photodetectors represent one component of a variety of devices such as imagers, pulse oximeters, and motion sensors. Organic photodetectors are attractive, mainly due to their simplicity in processing and competitive performance compared to Si based devices. However, in order to realize this important class of devices, tailoring the processing methodology to plastic foils (e.g. solvent compatibility, processing temperature), the fabrication of mechanically stable electrodes with suitable work functions, and the development of robust and flexible encapsulation represent the largest barriers towards commercialization.
Our device structure relies on established and simple processing techniques that lead to air-stable J-V characteristics after at least 1 week of constant exposure to ambient conditions. Additionally, by virtue of the electrodes chosen, the proposed structure is amenable to a wide variety of donor materials typical used in bulk heterojunction devices, which allows for precise control of the active layer&’s spectral responsivity. Using a model system, the steady state J-V, efficiency, light-intensity dependence, and external quantum efficiency characteristics are evaluated under AM 1.5 G illumination as well as OLED (green and red) light sources. The combination of our efforts represent a significant step towards the development of truly conformable, wearable, and mechanically stable devices based on organic electronic elements. Finally, the next steps for the improvement and implementation of our devices into more complex and functional devices are outlined and discussed.
[1] M. Kaltenbrunner, T. Sekitani, J. Reeder, T. Yokota, K. Kuribara, T. Tokuhara, M. Drack, R. Schwödiauer, I. Graz, S. Bauer-Gogonea, S. Bauer, T. Someya, Nature2013, 499, 458.
[2] M. Kaltenbrunner, M. S. White, E. D. G#322;owacki, T. Sekitani, T. Someya, N. S. Sariciftci, S. Bauer, Nat Commun2012, 3, 770.

Future portable and wearable devices for energy conversion and storage require not only good conversion efficiency and energy storage density, but also good flexibility of the devices. More importantly, these devices are expected to be printable, like printing newspapers, so as to meet the economic viability of the technology. Polymer-assisted metal deposition (PAMD) is a recent-developed full-solution coating and printing chemical approach for making high-performance flexible and wearable metal conductors [1]. In the talk, we will discuss how to use PAMD to achieve full-solution fabrication of high-performance flexible organic solar cells (OSCs) and wearable supercapacitor (SC) yarns. The power conversion efficiency of as-made OSCs (using P3HT:PCBM as a standard active layer) reaches 3.11%, being the best value reported in the literature for devices made by full solution methods [2]. The SC yarns also show simultaneously remarkable energy density and power density that are among the best in the literature [3]. Importantly, both devices can be bent and folded for more than 1000 cycles without obvious device degradation. These devices are demonstrated as promising portable and wearable energy conversion and storage devices.
References:
[1] Y. Yu, C. Yan, Z. J. Zheng*, Adv. Mater. 2014, 26, 5508-5516.
[2] K. Li, H. Zhen, L. Niu, X. Fang, Y. Zhang, R. Guo, Y. Yu, F. Yan, H. Li, Z. J. Zheng*, Adv. Mater. 2014, 26, 7271-7278.
[3] L. Liu, Y. Yu, C. Yan, K. Li, Z. J. Zheng*, Nat. Commun. 2015, DOI:10.1038/ncomms8260.

Harvesting of radio-frequency signals is an attractive alternative for powering of flexible electronics such as sensor labels and wearable electronics. Rectification of such signals in the UHF range (up to and above 1 GHz) requires high-speed, high carrier mobility semiconductors which is a challenge for organic materials. Here, we present two methods to manufacture flexible diodes using silicon microparticles (Si µPs), both of which yield operating frequencies above 1.6 GHz. The first method uses printing techniques to embed Si and NbSi2 µPs in an epoxy-based matrix on a flexible substrate, providing an all-printed diode where tunneling current is rectified due to asymmetry of the oxide layers. The second method is based on a free-standing film cast from an aqueous suspension of nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) and Si µPs. This film can be laminated at room temperature onto a PET foil substrate with Al contacts, creating a Schottky diode. Both types of device have been shown to provide an output DC voltage of at least 1 V at an input frequency of 1.6 GHz, enough to switch a printed electrochromic display using the harvested RF signal from a GSM phone.

Optical tracking systems are often integrated with flat panel solar cells to maximize electrical power generation over the course of a day. However, to accommodate the weight of the panels and added forces due to wind loading, conventional trackers require costly and cumbersome structural supports that increase capital expenditures and prevent rooftop or mobile deployment. Furthermore, additional mechanical linkages are often required to facilitate and synchronize tracking, making these systems more complex. To address these limitations, we demonstrate a low-profile and lightweight laminated tracking structure that integrates dynamic kirigami substrates and thin-film GaAs solar cells. Stretching the laminate triggers controlled buckling along the sheet in a way that tilts the solar cells towards the sun globally in proportion to the axial strain on the system, to within ±1° pointing accuracy. We demonstrate devices for which solar tracking performance approaches that of conventional single-axis systems, with no appreciable decrease in power conversion efficiency or mechanical performance after more than 300 cycles. These results suggest that kirigami-enabled tracking systems could decrease installation costs and expose new markets for rooftop, mobile, and spaceborne tracking arrays. Similar design rules may be extended for use in radar, optical beam steering, and other optical and mechanical applications.

It is critically important to develop miniature energy harvesting and storage devices in modern electronics, e.g., for portable and foldable electronic facilities. Here novel miniature fiber-shaped solar cells, electrochemical capacitors and lithium-ion batteries as well as their integrated devices are carefully discussed with unique and promising advantages such as lightweight and weaveable compared with the conventional planar architecture.^1-5
REFERENCES
(1) Chen, T.; Qiu, L.; Yang, Z.; Peng, H. Chem. Soc. Rev.2013, 42, 5031-5041.
(2) Pan, S.; Yang, Z.; Li, H.; Qiu, L.; Sun, H.; Peng, H. J. Am. Chem. Soc.2013, 135, 10622-10625.
(3) Yang, Z.; Sun, H.; Chen, T.; Qiu, L.; Luo, Y.; Peng, H. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.2013, 52, 7545-7548.
(4) Ren, J.; Li, L.; Chen, C.; Chen, X.; Cai, Z.; Qiu, L.; Wang, Y.; Peng, H. Adv. Mater.2013, 25, 1155-1159.
(5) Chen, T.; Qiu, L.; Yang, Z.; Cai, Z.; Ren, J.; Li, H.; Lin, H.; Sun, X.; Peng, H. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.2012, 51, 11977-11980.

Lithium battery is very effective system to store electrical energy for many applications, in particular for on board application. A promising market¹ is developing for microbatteries because of many new devices requiring some energy on board with drastic size limitation: RFID ship, medical or cosmetic devices (pace maker or nicotine patch), autonomous sensors, security (smart credit card)hellip;
This communication presents our microbatteries development in regard with literature. Standard way of deposition is based on PVD process and use LiPON^2,3 as solid electrolyte with dense electrodes. This commercialized solution induces high cost and long time process. Other interesting ways use new 3D design to increase microbattery performances, in terms of energy or power density, or use easier way of deposition like printing to reduce process costs.
Our approach uses ink jet printing to deposit electrode and electrolyte. First, aqueous based electrode ink, compatible with ink jet printing, has been formulated to obtain homogeneous porous composite LiFePO₄ electrode⁴. Furthermore, ionogel⁵ solid electrolyte has been obtained through sol-gel route with ionogel precursors printing⁶. After the polycondensation of the deposited precursors, ionic liquid and lithium salt are confined into silica backbone matrix to form the ionogel solid electrolyte. This printed ionogel is compatible with porous composite electrode and has high solid electrolyte performances: high ionic conductivity, high electrochemical stability versus lithium and high thermal stability. Full lithium ion microbatteries incorporating ionogel electrolyte have been printed and electrochemically tested.
1. Thin-Film and Printed Battery Markets. NanoMarkets, (2012).
2. J.B. Bates, N.J. Dudney, G.R. Gruzalski, R.A. Zuhr, A. Choudhury, C.F. Luck, Solid State Ionics, 53-56, 647-654, (1992).
3. X. Yu, J.B. Bates, G.E. Jellison, F.X. Hart, J. Electrochem. Soc.,144(2), 524-532, (1997).
4. P.-E. Delannoy, B. Riou, T. Brousse, J. Le Bideau, D. Guyomard, B. Lestriez, J. Power Sources, 287, 261-268, (2015)
5. J. Le Bideau, J.-B. Ducros, P. Soudan, D. Guyomard, Adv. Funct. Mater. 21, 4073-4078, (2011)
6. P.-E. Delannoy, B. Riou, B. Lestriez, D. Guyomard, T. Brousse, J. Le Bideau, J. Power Sources 274, 1085-1090, (2015)

The metacapacitors project aims to improve efficiency, functionality and form factor of off-line power converters suitable for LED solid-state lighting, with a view to developing an attractive technology platform for load management and power conversion across a broad range of applications. Based on integrated switched-capacitor (SC) topologies, the project adopts an integrated approach from materials to devices to circuits. We designed capacitors based on high k dielectric nanocrystals, that can be prepared using high throughput microfabrication/ nanotechnology techniques, ink deposition and multilayering. The capacitor dielectric, a nanocomposite composed of (Ba,Sr)TiO3 nanocrystals in polyfurfuryl alcohol (BST/PFA, k > 20, 100 Hz-1 MHz, DF < 0.01, 20 kHz), targets a high volumetric capacitance density and ripple current capability. The dielectric is demonstrated to function in a finished capacitor > 1000 hrs at 125 degrees C. The capacitors were board-integrated with a custom hybrid-switched-capacitor-resonant (HSCR) DC-DC converter IC. The converter integrates a balanced SC front-end with a series resonant tank, enabling nearly lossless current regulation and tranformerless galvanic isolation. The converter IC can be stacked in the voltage domain to interface a range of inputs. The tested driver delivers about 15 W at 470 mA to a string of 12 LEDs with 90% peak efficiency.

Supercapacitor with ultrahigh energy density (e.g. comparable with those of rechargeable batteries) and long cycling ability (>50 000 cycles) is attractive for the next-generation energy storage devices. Herein a novel hierarchically nanoarchitecture of graphite foam/carbon nanotube framework coated with a thin layer of iron oxide was successfully constructed with chemical vapor deposition of carbon substrate and the following atomic layer deposition (ALD) of Fe₂O₃ on the surface. The obtained electrode can be used as high performance electrode for flexible supercapacitor. The full-cell of anode based on this structure gives rise to a high energy of ~74.7 Wh/kg at the power of ~1400 W/kg, and ~95.4% of the capacitance can be retained after 50 000 cycles of charge-discharge. These performance features are superior among those reported for metal oxide based supercapacitors, making it a promising candidate for the next generation high performance electrochemical energy storage. The novel structures with ALD provide an exciting direction to rational design abundant promising nanostructures with different functional composites and for many other applications, such as lithium ion battery, catalyst and sensor.

Flexible transparent conductors with high performance are important as the top electrode for a variety of emerging flexible optoelectronic devices, including solar cells, flat panel displays, and touch screens. We report an experimental study on the fabrication and characterization of flexible hierarchical graphene/silver grid structures for transparent conductors. The hierarchical structure allows for uniform and local current conductivity due to the graphene and exhibits low sheet resistance because the microscale silver grid serves as a conductive backbone. Conductive AFM is used to investigate the electrical uniformity of the structure.
Our samples demonstrate 94% diffusive transmission with a sheet resistance of 0.6 Omega;/sq and a direct current to optical conductivity ratio σ_dc/σ_op of 8900. The sheet resistance of the hierarchical structure may be improved by over 3 orders of magnitude and with little decrease in transmission compared with graphene. Furthermore, the graphene protects the silver grid from thermal oxidation and better maintains the sheet resistance of the structure at elevated temperature. The graphene also strengthens the adhesion of the metal grid with the substrate such that the structure is more resilient under repeated bending.

Over the last decade, the increasing demand for lightweight energy storage devices and their pervasive diffusions predicted by mid-term forecasts led to the intensification of research activities focused on the Li-ion technology. Leaving aside the search for new high energy density and durable active materials, most of the recent research focused on the development of shapeable devices, the substitution of binders to shift from solvent- to water-based electrode formulation and, overall, the search for new high throughput/low environmental impact production processes.
Within this context, early works demonstrated that both cellulose fibers and nanofibers dispersed in water can be effectively used as binder for the elaboration of self-standing anodes and cathodes with good mechanical and electrochemical performances. These electrodes were successfully used to assembly full “paper cells” using a paper sheet as separator. Moreover, the use of fibrous binders allowed using a quick aqueous filtration process for electrodes processing thus paving the way for the transfer of conventional papermaking technologies towards Li-ion cells manufacturing.
Flexible, self-standing and easily recyclable graphite and LiFePO₄ electrodes were then processed on a pilot paper machine by spray coating of the electrode slurries on a wet paper substrate at speed ranging between 10 and 15 m/min. Electrodes were formulated using both carboxymethylcellulose and microfibrillated cellulose as binders and displayed both excellent processability on the paper machine and good cycling performances. Additionally, the use of composite (SiO₂/cellulose nanofibers) nanopaper as separator and the carbonization of cellulose nanofibers in paper electrodes can lead to a sound increase in the performance of battery components thus showing the multiple roles that cellulose can play in the elaboration of Li-ion batteries, i.e. electrode binder, electronic conductor precursor, structural material.
Even if some issues (such as energy density increase, complete water removal for long cycle life and the elaboration of highly conducting, metal foil-free, electrodes) remain to be addressed for the production of complete flexible cells on a paper machine, production machineries and materials derived from papermaking appear as promising technologies for the mass production of flexible and environmentally friendly Li-ion cells.
The aim of this speech is to provide an overview of the formulation and processing routes, from laboratory to pilot plant scale, which led to electrodes and separator elaboration.

Research on existing and emerging energy conversion and storage technologies is pivotal to solve the economic and environmental challenges facing the energy sector. The general approach to meet both of these challenges is by exploring novel materials and device designs, such as those recently developed in organic and hybrid photovoltaic solar cells. In addition, progress in storage of the produced energy is equally important. Interestingly, the co-integration of photovoltaic technologies and Li-ion batteries (LiBs) is expected to mark a turning point for nomad devices. However, to further improve the efficiency and stability of these devices, a better understanding of the device physics and how structural changes affects charge generation and transport at the nanometer scale is mandatory.
Here, we report on our approach to develop new grid-like hybrid three-dimensional architectures and devices based on semiconductor 1 D nanostructures based on carbone nanotubes, silicon nanowires, or metal oxide (TiO_2, ZnO) nanorods combined with conjugated polymer materials (i.e. poly(3 hexyl thiophene) - P3HT) which could be used for the fabrication of transparent and flexible combined devices. Scanning probe microscopy techniques are used to locally study the morphological, electrical and mechanical properties of prototypes. Results of the use of new grid-like electrodes, integrated to transparent substrates and coated with electrically interconnected metal nano-shells to improve the performance of LiBs will be presented. Optimized anode architectures display enhanced capacity retention.

Scientific progress in searching for new π-conjugated electron- accepting materials has been greatly limited to the commonly used fullerene- based structures. In this work, a fundamental link is established between frustrated electronminus;phonon coupling and broken charge conjugation symmetry for π-conjugated systems. This effectively leads to a practical materials design route of using naturally abundant five-membered and six-membered conjugated rings to systematically construct a library of electron-accepting materials beyond fullerenes. Coupled to the recently developed π-conjugated copolymer electron donors of targeted optical bandgaps, a comprehensive list of electron donor and acceptor combinations with the optimal power conversion efficiencies is proposed for the photovoltaic solar cell applications.

For a long time, the dominant piezoceramics has been based on lead zirconium titanate (Pb(Zr_(1-x)Ti_x)O₃ or PZT). The increased usage of PZT releases more and more lead mainly in the form of either lead oxide or lead zirconium titanate into the environment. However the intrinsic properties of PZT ceramics, be it in granular or fibular form, are seen to offer the highest chance of being part of a successful piezoceramic-polymer flexible composites. In the present study, the preparation and dielectric and piezoelectric properties of potassium sodium niobate (KNN) based lead-free piezoelectric composite are investigated for sensor applications and energy harvesting. A novel double step calcination process route does lead to the formation of pure, 2 µm large cubic Li-doped KNN particles. This allows the formation of long chain like structures with minimal topological defects during the dielectrophoretic structuring of KNN-epoxy composites. The structural, microstructural and piezoelectric properties are investigated and discussed in detail.The inter-particle distance between the particles within the chain is around 0.15 µm which is very much lower than the similar systems. The value of the piezoelectric voltage coefficient of the structured 10 vol. % structured KNN- epoxy composites also exceeds that of all values for such functional composites reported in the literature. The double calcination strategy for KNN ceramic powder in combination with a dielectrophoretic structuring process opens a new route towards lead-free piezoelectric composites with enhanced properties for sensor and energy harvesting applications.

Additive and low-temperature printing processes such as screen printing enable low-cost and low-complexity fabrication of electronics on flexible substrates, including over large areas. This has led to the development of a variety of printed and flexible devices for energy harvesting and storage, in addition to power-consuming devices such as sensors and displays. In systems containing more than one type of device, power electronics are often necessary to regulate voltage or convert between the operating voltages of the different devices. Passive components—inductors, capacitors, and resistors—perform vital functions such as short-term energy storage and voltage measurement in power electronic circuits. Utilizing printed and flexible passive components for power electronics allows a deeper level of integration with the energy sources and loads, but also places stringent requirements on the components to minimize power dissipation and maximize efficiency. In particular, printed planar inductors require careful optimization of the geometry, materials and printing processes to achieve sufficiently low series resistance. Here, we present screen-printed silver microflake inductors with inductance up to 8 mu;H, series resistance below 7 Omega;, and quality factor up to 35, operating in the 100 kHz - 10 MHz frequency range that is most relevant for power electronics. We have also fabricated screen-printed barium titanate capacitors up to 1.3 nF and carbon resistors ranging from 3 kOmega; to 1 MOmega;. A simple flexible RLC circuit is first constructed to demonstrate the potential for integration of multiple passive components. Then, printed inductors and resistors are combined with a conventional silicon IC to form a step-up voltage regulator, with efficiency surpassing 85% of that of a control circuit using surface-mount inductor and resistors over a range of load currents and input voltages. Finally, the voltage regulator is applied to power organic light-emitting diodes at 5 V from a flexible lithium-ion battery.