Nanofibrillated Cellulose-Based Electrolyte and Electrode for Paper-Based Supercapacitors

Solar photovoltaic technologies could fully deploy and impact the energy conversion systems in our society if mass-produced energy-storage solutions exist. A supercapacitor can regulate the fluctuations on the electrical grid on short time scales. Their mass-implementation requires the use of abundant materials, biological and organic synthetic materials are attractive because of atomic element abundancy and low-temperature synthetic processes. Nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) coming from the forest industry is exploited as a three-dimensional template to control the transport of ions in an electrolyte-separator, with nanochannels filled of aqueous electrolyte. The nanochannels are defined by voids in the nanocomposite made of NFC and the proton transporting polymer polystyrene sulfonic acid PSSH. The ionic conductivity of NFC-PSSH composites (0.2 S cm(-1) at 100% relative humidity) exceeds sea water in a material that is solid, feel dry to the finger, but filled of nanodomains of water. A paper-based supercapacitor made of NFC-PSSH electrolyte-separator sandwiched between two paper-based electrodes is demonstrated. Although modest specific capacitance (81.3 F g(-1)), power density (2040 W kg(-1)) and energy density (1016 Wh kg(-1)), this is the first conceptual demonstration of a supercapacitor based on cellulose in each part of the device; which motivates the search for using paper manufacturing as mass-production of energy-storage devices.