Flexible Energy-storage Devices: Maneuvers and Intermediate Towards Multi-functional Composites

Abstract

Flexible energy-storage devices (FESDs) have been studied and developed extensively over the last few years because of demands in various fields. Since electrochemical performance and mechanical flexibility must be taken into account together, different framework from composition of conventional energy-storage devices (ESDs) is required. Numerous types of electrodes have been proposed to implement the FESDs. Herein, we review the works related to the FESDs so far and focus on free-standing electrodes and, especially substrate-based ones. The way to utilize carbon woven fabric (CF) or carbon cloth (CC) as flexible substrates is quite simple and intuitive. However, it is meaningful in the point of that the framework exploiting CF or CC can be extended to other applications resulting in multifunctional composites. Therefore, summary, which is on utilization of carbon-based material and conductive substrate containing CF and CC for ESDs, turns out to be helpful for other researchers to have crude concepts to get into energy-storage multi-functional composite. Moreover, polymer electrolytes are briefly explored as well because safety is one of the most important issues in FESDs and the electrolyte part mainly includes difficult obstacles to overcome. Lastly, we suggest some points that need to be further improved and studied for FESDs.