Highly conductive templated-graphene fabrics for lightweight, flexible and foldable supercapacitors

The templated-rGO fabric, featuring high conductivity (<1.0 Ω 1) and low density (160 mg cm-2), is prepared by a simple dip-coating technique with sequentially coating nickel via polymer-assisted metal deposition (PAMD) and reduced-graphene oxide (rGO) on textile fabric templates at very mild conditions and is used in the fabrication of energy storage devices. As a proof of concept, both the layered and planar supercapacitors (SCs) are successfully fabricated using the rGO fabrics as templates, and both exhibit excellent electrochemical performance, ultrahigh stability with 2000 charge-discharge cycles and mechanical flexibility at bending (r = 3 mm) and even folding states. It is found that the material of textile fabric used has a profound effect on the electrochemical property of SCs. The comparison result reveals that loose natural cotton fabrics are more suitable than tight man-made nylon fabrics for preparing high-performance SCs. In addition, such supercapacitor can be sewed into commercial textiles and powers a LED light, indicating promising applications in wearable electronics.