Wearable devices such as smart bracelets, smartwatches, and Google Glass have become part of the daily lives of many trendsetters. However, ensuring stable power supply for these devices over extended periods and under deformation remains a significant challenge and a crucial research area. Recently, Professor Chen Su's research group at Nanjing University of Technology created a nonwoven electrode material using microfluidic spinning technology. The supercapacitor constructed with these nonwoven electrodes boasts the highest energy density among current fiber-based electrode supercapacitors, and also exhibits high flexibility and deformability. It can be integrated into fabrics, enabling stable power supply under deformation conditions, making it one of the best options for powering wearable devices. This research was published in *Nature Communications* and received positive reviews from reviewers.
According to Professor Chen Su and Teacher Wu Guan of the research group, the team in-situ bridged carbon nanotubes between the layers of black phosphorus material, which has poor conductivity, greatly improving the efficiency of interlayer electron conduction. Furthermore, since black phosphorus, like graphene, tends to accumulate between layers, the addition of carbon nanotubes effectively reduced this accumulation, increased the specific surface area, enlarged the ion adsorption surface, and improved the ion diffusion rate and accumulation, giving black phosphorus a larger ion diffusion channel. Moreover, the team used microfluidic spinning technology to draw, solidify, and fuse the black phosphorus composite spinning solution into a black phosphorus micro-nano composite fiber nonwoven electrode material, which possesses high conductivity, high energy density, and excellent flexible supercapacitor functionality. Constructing a flexible supercapacitor with high flexibility and deformability, it can be integrated into fabrics to power wearable devices.
The global market for smart wearable devices is worth approximately US$28 billion annually, growing at a rate of 10% per year. This research advances our understanding of constructing one-dimensional nanofiber energy storage wearable materials within microfluidic confined spaces, and is expected to find wide applications in wearable fields such as LEDs, smart bracelets, and flexible displays.
