Ultrafast Metal-Free Microsupercapacitor Arrays Directly Store Instantaneous High-Voltage Electricity from Mechanical Energy Harvesters

Abstract

Harvesting renewable mechanical energy is envisioned as a promising and sustainable way for power generation. Many recent mechanical energy harvesters are able to produce instantaneous (pulsed) electricity with a high peak voltage of over 100 V. However, directly storing such irregular high-voltage pulse electricity remains a great challenge. The use of extra power management components can boost storage efficiency but increase system complexity. Here utilizing the conducting polymer PEDOT:PSS, high-rate metal-free micro-supercapacitor (MSC) arrays are successfully fabricated for direct high-efficiency storage of high-voltage pulse electricity. Within an area of 2.4 × 3.4 cm2 on various paper substrates, large-scale MSC arrays (comprising up to 100 cells) can be printed to deliver a working voltage window of 160 V at an ultrahigh scan rate up to 30 V s−1. The ultrahigh rate capability enables the MSC arrays to quickly capture and efficiently store the high-voltage (≈150 V) pulse electricity produced by a droplet-based electricity generator at a high efficiency of 62%, significantly higher than that (<2%) of the batteries or capacitors demonstrated in the literature. Moreover, the compact and metal-free features make these MSC arrays excellent candidates for sustainable high-performance energy storage in self-charging power systems.