Tuning morphology and functional group of carbon cloth as textile electrodes towards high performance flexible supercapacitors

A highly efficient strategy is presented to chemically activate carbon cloth, thereby converting it into textile-based electrodes optimized for use in flexible supercapacitor devices. The carbon cloth is firstly treated to produce electrochemical active sites accompanying with the increase of surface area through Hummers method, and then surface morphology and oxygen-containing functional group amount of carbon cloth are further tuned by KOH etching. The formation of more microcracks and carboxyl groups on the carbon cloth surface significantly improves surface area and hydrophilicity. As a result, the activated carbon cloth shows increased areal capacitance density, strong charge-discharge rate handling, long-term electrochemical stability, and high flexibility. The impressive electrochemical performance mainly arises from the combined effects of double-layer and pseudocapacitance mechanisms.