Low-cost flexible supercapacitors with high-energy density based on nanostructured MnO2 and Fe2O3 thin films directly fabricated onto stainless steel

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.The facile and economical electrochemical and successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) methods have been employed in order to prepare manganese oxide (MnO2) and iron oxide (Fe2O3) thin films, respectively with the fine optimized nanostructures on highly flexible stainless steel sheet. The symmetric and asymmetric flexible-solid-state supercapacitors (FSS-SCs) of nanostructured (nanosheets for MnO2 and nanoparticles for Fe2O3) electrodes with Na2SO4/Carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) gel as a separator and electrolyte were assembled. MnO2 as positive and negative electrodes were used to fabricate symmetric SC, while the asymmetric SC was assembled by employing MnO2 as positive and Fe2O3 as negative electrode. Furthermore, the electrochemical features of symmetric and asymmetric SCs are systematically investigated. The results verify that the fabricated symmetric and asymmetric FSS-SCs present excellent reversibility (within the voltage window of 0–1V and 0–2V, respectively) and good cycling stability (83 and 91%, respectively for 3000 of CV cycles). Additionally, the asymmetric SC shows maximum specific capacitance of 92Fg−1, about 2-fold of higher energy density (41.8Wh kg−1) than symmetric SC and excellent mechanical flexibility. Furthermore, the “real-life” demonstration of fabricated SCs to the panel of SUK confirms that asymmetric SC has 2-fold higher energy density compare to symmetric SC.One of the authors GSG is thankful to DAE-BRNS, BARC Mumbai, India for the award of, “JRF”. Authors are also grateful to Department of Science and Technology (DST) for financial support through PURSE and FIST & University Grant Commission (UGC) India through DSA-I scheme. Authors are also thankful to UGC-DAE CSR, Indore centre for providing Raman facility. ICN2 acknowledges support from the Severo Ochoa Program (MINECO, Grant SEV-2013-0295).Peer Reviewe