Sustainable Production of Wool and Cotton Textile - Based Supercapacitors

Textile-based supercapacitors (TSCs) are being developed to become convenient and safe energy sources to power a variety of electronic devices. TSCs are unique in that they combine the flexibility and lightweight nature of textiles with the energy storage capabilities of traditional supercapacitors. The TSCs are prepared by coating wool and cotton yarn with Ti₃C₂T_x MXenes, a 2D conductive material. In this study, an auto-coater was used to pull yarn through a MXene bath and then dried the yarn. This one-step process was repeated twelve times to increase the mass loading of the conductive material, increase the conductivity, and ultimately enhance the overall capacitance of TSCs. In addition to TSC device testing and characterization, we developed a method to test a two-electrode system by using individual yarns to classify their intrinsic capacitive behavior. Electrochemical characterization was performed on MXene-coated wool and cotton to determine the charge storage and resistive behavior of yarns. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) curves were conducted to represent the charge storage and discharge behavior. Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) was performed to characterize the impedance behavior of the yarns and build an equivalent circuit model to determine the system parameters. Wool yarn has an intrinsic specific capacitance of 0.49 mF/cm while cotton yarn has an intrinsic specific capacitance of 0.0935 mF/cm. These tests represent the potential of using wool based TSCs versus cotton based TSCs.