Bioscience (Nanotechnology): USRA Researchers Develop a Packaging Process for Printed Supercapacitor
December 2020
USRA’s Nanotechnology team has worked to improve the finite lifetime and cyclic performance of batteries and supercapacitors. Efforts are underway worldwide to improve it along with robustness and other metrics such as energy and power densities. These issues have received even more prominent attention recently with the emerging printing technology to meet the demands of Internet of Things and flexible/wearable devices. Packaging the device to protect it from the ambient is the first critical step in ensuring sustained performance. However, it is hard to apply the same packaging technique as in conventional batteries and supercapacitors when dealing with printed version of these devices featuring inkjet-printed electrode and active layers.
The team led by Meyya Meyyappan, Ph.D. (NASA) including Jin-Woo Han, Ph.D., Senior Scientist (USRA), Myeong-Lok Seol, Ph.D., Associate Scientist (USRA), NAMS intern Ellie Sadatian (UCSD grad student) and colleagues from NASA Ames and Marshall Space Flight Centers have solved this issue for the first time by developing a printed passivation layer that provides extreme protection of all the active layers and the electrolyte from the deleterious impact of external ambient. The standard for benchmarking is manual wrapping of the device using a low-density polyethylene (LDPE) film which is commonly used to wrap food and meat and available under various brand names (Saran wrap for example). The printed passivation layer provided the same level of protection as this manual wrap while reducing the labor involved in manual wrapping or the need to invent a new automation method to use LDPE film on millions of supercapacitors and batteries.
The results were published in a recent issue of the journal ACS Applied Electronics Materials (Vol. 2, pp. 3643-3649, 2020). This work was sponsored by the NASA’s In Space Manufacturing Program which strives to print various components and devices such as sensors, antennas, batteries, supercapacitors, energy generation devices and others in the future in the Space Station.
