A Flexible Alkaline Rechargeable Ni/Fe Battery Based on Graphene Foam/Carbon Nanotubes Hybrid Film

• Main Authors: Liu, Jilei, Chen, Minghua, Zhang, Lili, Jiang, Jian, Yan, Jiaxu, Huang, Yizhong, Lin, Jianyi, Fan, Hong Jin, Shen, Ze Xiang
• Other Authors: School of Materials Science & Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Carbon nanotubes; Flexible battery; Graphene foam; Hybrid electrodes; Ni/Fe cell
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/81932; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/41044
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The development of portable and wearable electronics has promoted increasing demand for high-performance power sources with high energy/power density, low cost, lightweight, as well as ultrathin and flexible features. Here, a new type of flexible Ni/Fe cell is designed and fabricated by employing Ni(OH)2 nanosheets and porous Fe2O3 nanorods grown on lightweight graphene foam (GF)/carbon nanotubes (CNTs) hybrid films as electrodes. The assembled f-Ni/Fe cells are able to deliver high energy/power densities (100.7 Wh/kg at 287 W/kg and 70.9 Wh/kg at 1.4 kW/kg, based on the total mass of active materials) and outstanding cycling stabilities (retention 89.1% after 1000 charge/discharge cycles). Benefiting from the use of ultralight and thin GF/CNTs hybrid films as current collectors, our f-Ni/Fe cell can exhibit a volumetric energy density of 16.6 Wh/l (based on the total volume of full cell), which is comparable to that of thin film battery and better than that of typical commercial supercapacitors. Moreover, the f-Ni/Fe cells can retain the electrochemical performance with repeated bendings. These features endow our f-Ni/Fe cells a highly promising candidate for next generation flexible energy storage systems.