Utilizing human hair for solid-state flexible fiber-based asymmetric supercapacitors

Abstract The demands for wearable energy storage devices keep growing and novel flexible electrode materials and facile prepared methods for these devices are crucial and attractive. In this work, human hair fiber is employed as the flexible fiber-based material due to the high utilization values of low cost, controllable length and high elasticity capable. Herein, an effective and hazard-free microwave-assisted method is reported to develop superelastic reduced graphene oxide coating human hair (rGO@Hh) to achieve conductive and high-strength fibrous electrode. With the braided rGO@Hh fibers, nickel hydroxide nanoribbon-intercalated rGO nanosheets (Ni(OH)2/rGO@Hh) are further prepared through microwave radiation treatment, which shows an interconnected porous structure with outstanding electrochemical performances of high specific capacitance (316 F g−1 at 1 A g−1) and good cycling performance. Moreover, a solid-state fiber-based asymmetric supercapacitor (FASC) is assembled with rGO@Hh fibers and Ni(OH)2/rGO@Hh fibers as negative and positive electrodes, which demonstrates a high energy of 27.6 Wh kg−1 and a power density of 699 W kg−1, respectively. The FASC also can be further used for numerous electronic products, presenting its prospect for portable wearable devices with high tensile strength and excellent performances.