Highly Stable and Eco-friendly Marine Self-Charging Power Systems Composed of Conductive Polymer Supercapacitors with Seawater as an Electrolyte

Baofeng Zhang; Chuguo Zhang; Wei Yuan; Ou Yang; Yuebo Liu; Lixia He; Yuexiao Hu; Linglin Zhou; Jie Wang; Zhong Lin Wang

doi:10.1021/acsami.1c22129

Highly Stable and Eco-friendly Marine Self-Charging Power Systems Composed of Conductive Polymer Supercapacitors with Seawater as an Electrolyte

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2022 Feb 23;14(7):9046-9056. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c22129. Epub 2022 Feb 10.

Authors

Baofeng Zhang^{1

2}, Chuguo Zhang^{1

2}, Wei Yuan^{1

2}, Ou Yang^{1

2}, Yuebo Liu^{1

3}, Lixia He^{1

2}, Yuexiao Hu^{1

3}, Linglin Zhou^{1

2}, Jie Wang^{1

2

3}, Zhong Lin Wang^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, P. R. China.
² College of Nanoscience and Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, P. R. China.
³ Center on Nanoenergy Research, School of Physical Science and Technology, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, P. R. China.
⁴ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, United States.

PMID: 35143173
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c22129

Abstract

A self-charging power system harvesting random and low-frequency wave energy into electricity provides a promising strategy for the construction of smart oceans. However, the system faces huge challenges of easy corrosion in the marine environment and the utilization of toxic organic electrolytes in energy storage devices. To address the issues above, a seawater supercapacitor (SWSC) for the marine self-charging power system is rationally proposed by using a conductive polymer, polypyrrole with hollow morphology (h-PPy), to enhance the stability and capacitance while using seawater as an eco-friendly electrolyte to reduce the cost and achieve sustainability. The hollow design provides a shortcut for the ion transportation of seawater into the h-PPy electrode, and the SWSC achieves a high power density of 4.32 kW kg^-1 under an energy density of 5.12 W h kg^-1. Even after 180 days in seawater, h-PPy still endows a mass retention of 99.9%, enabling the SWSC to maintain a stability of 99.3% after 6000 cycles. More importantly, when combined with a TENG module as the marine self-charging power system to harvest wave energy, the system provides a stable output in water wave to drive electronics and sensors, which shows a competitive potential in the smart ocean and marine internet of things.

Keywords: conductive polymer supercapacitor; low-cost and eco-friendly; marine self-charging power system; seawater electrolyte; triboelectric nanogenerator.