Fractal Electrochemical Microsupercapacitors

Mrinal Kanti Hota, Qiu Jiang, Yousof Mashraei, Khaled N. Salama, Husam N. Alshareef

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

56 Scopus citations

Abstract

The first successful fabrication of microsupercapacitors (μ-SCs) using fractal electrode designs is reported. Using sputtered anhydrous RuO thin-film electrodes as prototypes, μ-SCs are fabricated using Hilbert, Peano, and Moore fractal designs, and their performance is compared to conventional interdigital electrode structures. Microsupercapacitor performance, including energy density, areal and volumetric capacitances, changes with fractal electrode geometry. Specifically, the μ-SCs based on the Moore design show a 32% enhancement in energy density compared to conventional interdigital structures, when compared at the same power density and using the same thin-film RuO electrodes. The energy density of the Moore design is 23.2 mWh cm at a volumetric power density of 769 mW cm. In contrast, the interdigital design shows an energy density of only 17.5 mWh cm at the same power density. We show that active electrode surface area cannot alone explain the increase in capacitance and energy density. We propose that the increase in electrical lines of force, due to edging effects in the fractal electrodes, also contribute to the higher capacitance. This study shows that electrode fractal design is a viable strategy for improving the performance of integrated μ-SCs that use thin-film electrodes at no extra processing or fabrication cost.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1700185
JournalAdvanced Electronic Materials
Volume3
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 17 2017

Bibliographical note

KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01
Acknowledgements: Research reported in this publication was supported by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). The authors thank the nanofabrication laboratory staff and the imaging and characterization laboratory staff at KAUST, especially Elhadj M. Diallo for their excellent support.

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