Integrated free-standing WS ₂ 3D-printed carbon supercapacitor with solid state electrolyte

There is a huge need for energy storage devices due to the depletion of natural gas and the increasing requirement for portable electronic gadgets. Fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D-printing has drawn tremendous interest for the fabrication of batteries and supercapacitors (SCs) due to its tabletop manufacturing technique, bespoke design, fast prototyping and user-friendly process. However, there are fewer available conductive filaments for FDM printing that are ideal from an energy storage standpoint. 2D transition metal dichalcogenide WS2 has been discovered to be a favourable material for electrochemical energy storage. As a result, in this work, we modified a carbon electrode that was 3D-printed by incorporating WS2 in order to enhance the capacitive performance of the SC electrode. The WS2-coated 3D-printed carbon electrode (WS2/3D-PCE) exhibits 2.8 times higher specific capacitance than the 3D-printed carbon electrode at 50 mV s−1. A solid-state symmetric supercapacitor (SS-SC) was fabricated with WS2/3D-PCE and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)/Li2SO4 as gel electrolytes. Such modified 3D-PCE opens up the opportunities to design any custom-shaped electrode with tailored properties and pave a route for future research that will lead to more electrochemical devices for portable electronics.