Bioinspired fractal electrodes for solar energy storages

• Published in: Scientific reports 2017-03, Vol.7 (1), p.45585-45585, Article 45585
• Main Authors: Thekkekara, Litty V., Gu, Min
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 142/126; 639/4077/4079/4105; 639/624/1075/524; Biomimetics; Clean technology; Electrical conductivity; Electrodes; Energy storage; Ferns; Fractals; Humanities and Social Sciences; Integration; multidisciplinary; Photovoltaic cells; Science; Solar energy; Surface area
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/srep45585

Solar energy storage is an emerging technology which can promote the solar energy as the primary source of electricity. Recent development of laser scribed graphene electrodes exhibiting a high electrical conductivity have enabled a green technology platform for supercapacitor-based energy storage, resulting in cost-effective, environment-friendly features, and consequent readiness for on-chip integration. Due to the limitation of the ion-accessible active porous surface area, the energy densities of these supercapacitors are restricted below ~3 × 10 −3  Whcm −3 . In this paper, we demonstrate a new design of biomimetic laser scribed graphene electrodes for solar energy storage, which embraces the structure of Fern leaves characterized by the geometric family of space filling curves of fractals. This new conceptual design removes the limit of the conventional planar supercapacitors by significantly increasing the ratio of active surface area to volume of the new electrodes and reducing the electrolyte ionic path. The attained energy density is thus significantly increased to ~10 −1  Whcm −3 - more than 30 times higher than that achievable by the planar electrodes with ~95% coulombic efficiency of the solar energy storage. The energy storages with these novel electrodes open the prospects of efficient self-powered and solar-powered wearable, flexible and portable applications.