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Graphene Aerogel Ink for the Inkjet Printing of the Micro-Supercapacitors

The advances in the mass scale manufacturing of microscale energy storage devices via inkjet printing rely on the development of high-quality printable ink. The earth-abundant, non-toxic carbon materials such as graphene, carbon nanotube (CNT), reduced graphene oxide (r-GO) have shown excellent electrochemical performance and thus garnered significant interest as suitable electrode material. Here we report the formulation of printable graphene aerogel ink and the fabrication of the micro-supercapacitors (μ-SCs) on flexible polyimide substrates via inkjet printing method. The advantage of using pristine graphene aerogel intends to avoid the complex processing steps and the use of toxic chemicals in the ink formulation and lower the concentration of other additive components. Thus, a higher loading of active functional material in the printable ink is achieved. The aerogel ink directly employed to write the interdigitated μ-SCs devices on a flexible polyimide substrate at room temperature via inkjet printing. The electrochemical performance measured using the organic ionic liquid in the voltage range of 0-1 volt. These printed μ-SCs showed an areal capacity of 55 μF/cm2 at a current density of 6 micro-amp/cm2. The printed devices showed good stability, with ~80% of capacity retention after 10,000 cycles. Contrary to the graphene-based μ-SCs, the aerogel micro-supercapacitors do not show a significant distortion in the CV scan even at a very high scan rate of ~2Vs-1. Thus, we propose graphene aerogel as promising electrode material for mass-scale production of the μ-SCs.