As a promising candidate for future batteries, the lithium–sulfur battery is gaining increasing interest due to its high capacity and energy density. However, over the years, lithium–sulfur batteries ...have been plagued by fading capacities and the low Coulombic efficiency derived from its unique electrochemical behavior, which involves solid–liquid transition reactions. Moreover, lithium–sulfur batteries employ metallic lithium as the anode, which engenders safety vulnerability of the battery. The electrodes play a pivotal role in the performance of lithium–sulfur batteries. A leap forward in progress of lithium–sulfur batteries is always accompanied by a revolution in the electrode technology. In this review, recent progress in rechargeable lithium–sulfur batteries is summarized in accordance with the evolution of the electrodes, including the diversified cathode design and burgeoning metallic‐lithium‐free anodes. Although the way toward application has still many challenges associated, recent progress in lithium–sulfur battery technology still paints an encouraging picture of a revolution in rechargeable batteries.
On the list of cutting‐edge batteries for future power systems, the lithium–sulfur battery is a promising candidate applicable in electrical vehicles and portable devices. In this review, recent progress in lithium–sulfur battery is outlined regarding the evolution of the electrodes, considering the various cathodes to modified anodes, and presenting exciting prospects for future development.
With the booming development of flexible and wearable electronics, their safety issues and operation stabilities have attracted worldwide attentions. Compared with traditional liquid electrolytes, ...gel polymer electrolytes (GPEs) are preferred due to their higher safety and adaptability to the design of flexible energy storage devices. This review summarizes the recent progress of GPEs with enhanced physicochemical properties and specified functionalities for the application in electrochemical energy storage. Functional GPEs that are capable to achieve unity lithium‐ion transference number and offer additional pseudocapacitance to the overall capacitance are carefully discussed. The smart GPEs with self‐protection, thermotolerant, and self‐healing abilities are particularly highlighted. To close, the future directions and remaining challenges of the GPEs for application in electrochemical energy storages are summarized to provide clues for the following development.
Gel polymer electrolytes represent an attractive alternative to liquid electrolytes due to the superiorities of higher safety, better flexibility, and higher workability, which are promising for the use in electrochemical energy storage for the next‐generation flexible and wearable electronics. Their recent advancements, challenges, and perspectives are highlighted to provide guidance for the future study.
Smart Electronic Textiles Weng, Wei; Chen, Peining; He, Sisi ...
Angewandte Chemie (International ed.),
May 17, 2016, Letnik:
55, Številka:
21
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This Review describes the state‐of‐the‐art of wearable electronics (smart textiles). The unique and promising advantages of smart electronic textiles are highlighted by comparing them with the ...conventional planar counterparts. The main kinds of smart electronic textiles based on different functionalities, namely the generation, storage, and utilization of electricity, are then discussed with an emphasis on the use of functional materials. The remaining challenges are summarized together with important new directions to provide some useful clues for the future development of smart electronic textiles.
Working clothes: Electronic textiles are a promising technology that could soon become part of our everyday lives. The three typical functions of wearable electronics—generation, storage, and utilization of electricity—are discussed with a main focus on functional materials.
The formation of composite materials represents an efficient route to improve the performances of polymers and expand their application scopes. Due to the unique structure and remarkable mechanical, ...electrical, thermal, optical and catalytic properties, carbon nanotube and graphene have been mostly studied as a second phase to produce high performance polymer composites. Although carbon nanotube and graphene share some advantages in both structure and property, they are also different in many aspects including synthesis of composite material, control in composite structure and interaction with polymer molecule. The resulting composite materials are distinguished in property to meet different applications. This review article mainly describes the preparation, structure, property and application of the two families of composite materials with an emphasis on the difference between them. Some general and effective strategies are summarized for the development of polymer composite materials based on carbon nanotube and graphene.
Carbon nanotubes and graphene have been widely incorporated into polymers to synthesize high performance composite materials. This review article describes the preparation, structure, property and application of the two families of composite materials with an emphasis on the difference between them.
A general approach toward extremely stretchable and highly conductive electrodes was developed. The method involves wrapping a continuous carbon nanotube (CNT) thin film around pre‐stretched elastic ...wires, from which high‐performance, stretchable wire‐shaped supercapacitors were fabricated. The supercapacitors were made by twisting two such CNT‐wrapped elastic wires, pre‐coated with poly(vinyl alcohol)/H3PO4 hydrogel, as the electrolyte and separator. The resultant wire‐shaped supercapacitors exhibited an extremely high elasticity of up to 350 % strain with a high device capacitance up to 30.7 F g−1, which is two times that of the state‐of‐the‐art stretchable supercapacitor under only 100 % strain. The wire‐shaped structure facilitated the integration of multiple supercapacitors into a single wire device to meet specific energy and power needs for various potential applications. These supercapacitors can be repeatedly stretched from 0 to 200 % strain for hundreds of cycles with no change in performance, thus outperforming all the reported state‐of‐the‐art stretchable electronics.
Stretching out: Wire‐shaped supercapacitors with more than 350 % elasticity have been developed by twisting two carbon‐nanotube‐wrapped elastic wires together with a polymer electrolyte between them. These newly developed wire devices exhibited high performance with a stability lasting for multiple stretching cycles.
Metal–air batteries are considered one of the most promising next‐generation energy storage devices owing to their ultrahigh theoretical specific energy. However, sluggish cathode kinetics (O2 and ...CO2 reduction/evolution) result in large overpotentials and low round‐trip efficiencies which seriously hinder their practical applications. Utilizing light to drive slow cathode processes has increasingly becoming a promising solution to this issue. Considering the rapid development and emerging issues of this field, this Review summarizes the current understanding of light‐assisted metal–air batteries in terms of configurations and mechanisms, provides general design strategies and specific examples of photocathodes, systematically discusses the influence of light on batteries, and finally identifies existing gaps and future priorities for the development of practical light‐assisted metal–air batteries.
Using light to drive slow cathode kinetics has been explored as a promising solution to unlock the high theoretical specific energy of metal–air batteries. This Review summarizes the current understanding of light‐assisted metal–air batteries, discusses the significant influence of light on battery systems, and identifies existing gaps and future priorities.
It is highly desirable to develop flexible and efficient energy‐storage systems for widely used wearable electronic products. To this end, fiber‐shaped lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) attract increasing ...interest due to their combined superiorities of miniaturization, adaptability, and weavability, compared with conventional bulky and planar structures. Recent advances in the fabrication, structure, mechanism, and properties of fiber‐shaped LIBs are summarized here, with a focus on the electrode material. Remaining challenges and future directions are also highlighted to provide some useful insights from the viewpoint of practical applications.
Fiber‐shaped lithium‐ion batteries represent a next‐generation, promising power source given the superiorities of miniaturization, adaptability, and weavability compared with their planar counterparts. Recent advances in their fabrication, structure, mechanism, and properties are highlighted with an emphasis on the electrode material. The remaining challenges and future directions are also summarized to provide useful clues from the viewpoint of practical applications.
By using highly aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) sheets of excellent optical transmittance and mechanical stretchability as both the current collector and active electrode, high-performance transparent ...and stretchable all-solid supercapacitors with a good stability were developed. A transmittance up to 75% at the wavelength of 550 nm was achieved for a supercapacitor made from a cross-over assembly of two single-layer CNT sheets. The transparent supercapacitor has a specific capacitance of 7.3 F g(-1) and can be biaxially stretched up to 30% strain without any obvious change in electrochemical performance even over hundreds stretching cycles.
Modern electronic devices are moving toward miniaturization and integration with an emerging focus on wearable electronics. Due to their close contact with the human body, wearable electronics have ...new requirements including low weight, small size, and flexibility. Conventional 3D and 2D electronic devices fail to efficiently meet these requirements due to their rigidity and bulkiness. Hence, a new family of 1D fiber‐shaped electronic devices including energy‐harvesting devices, energy‐storage devices, light‐emitting devices, and sensing devices has risen to the challenge due to their small diameter, lightweight, flexibility, and weavability into soft textile electronics. The application challenges faced by fiber and textile electronics from single fiber‐shaped devices to continuously scalable fabrication, to encapsulation and testing, and to application mode exploration, are discussed. The evolutionary trends of fiber and textile electronics are then summarized. Finally, future directions required to boost their commercialization are highlighted.
The application challenges faced by fiber and textile electronics are discussed, from single fiber‐shaped devices, to continuously scalable fabrication, to encapsulation and testing, and to exploration of application modes. Evolutionary trends and new directions for future study are also provided.
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