posted on 2013-03-26, 00:00authored byPeihua Yang, Xu Xiao, Yuzhi Li, Yong Ding, Pengfei Qiang, Xinghua Tan, Wenjie Mai, Ziyin Lin, Wenzhuo Wu, Tianqi Li, Huanyu Jin, Pengyi Liu, Jun Zhou, Ching Ping Wong, Zhong Lin Wang
Although MnO2 is a promising material for supercapacitors (SCs) due to its excellent electrochemical performance and natural abundance, its wide application is limited by poor electrical conductivity. Inspired by our results that the electrochemical activity and electrical conductivity of ZnO nanowires were greatly improved after hydrogenation, we designed and fabricated hydrogenated single-crystal ZnO@amorphous ZnO-doped MnO2 core–shell nanocables (HZM) on carbon cloth as SC electrodes, showing excellent performance such as areal capacitance of 138.7 mF/cm2 and specific capacitance of 1260.9 F/g. Highly flexible all-solid-state SCs were subsequently assembled with these novel HZM electrodes using polyvinyl alcohol/LiCl electrolyte. The working devices achieved very high total areal capacitance of 26 mF/cm2 and retained 87.5% of the original capacitance even after 10 000 charge/discharge cycles. An integrated power pack incorporating series-wound SCs and dye-sensitized solar cells was demonstrated for stand-alone self-powered systems.