High-performance, flexible planar microsupercapacitors based on crosslinked polyaniline using laser printing lithography

With the latest trend of miniaturization of modern portable electronic devices, the development of small-sized, flexible power sources is in great demand. Herein, we report the fabrication of flexible and high-performance planar microsupercapacitors (MSCs) on a poly-ethylene terephthalate substrate as portable energy storage devices. We employed a facile laser printing technology and thermal crosslinking route to fabricate crosslinked polyaniline (PANI) based MSCs, taking advantage of the low processing cost and high cyclic stability. The flexible PANI MSCs after heat treatment in Argon atmosphere exhibited a remarkably high areal capacitance of 54 mF cm⁻² at the current density of 0.3 mA cm⁻², which is much higher than that of PANI MSCs reported so far elsewhere. 79.8% of the initial capacitance was retained after 1000 cycles, indicating the excellent cyclic stability of the devices. This innovative approach provides a new strategy for the facile fabrication of flexible and high-performance planar energy storage devices.