Structural Supercapacitor: A Proof of Concept and Performance Characterisation

Master thesis (2023)

Authors

S. Chen Aerospace Engineering

Contributors

K. Masania Aerospace Manufacturing Technologies (mentor)
C. Dransfeld Aerospace Manufacturing Technologies (graduation committee member)
S. G.P. Giovani Pereira Castro Aerospace Structures & Computational Mechanics (graduation committee member)
Faculty
Aerospace Engineering, Aerospace Engineering
Copyright: © 2023 Sian Ying Chen
More Info
expand_more

Published Date

28-06-2023

Language

English

Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Faculty

Aerospace Engineering

Abstract

A structural supercapacitor (SSC) is a composite material that bears mechanical loads and stores energy, and its encapsulation method of the device is vital for scale-up. Here we present an SSC with an encapsulation interface consisting of spread-tow fabric electrodes and glass fabric encapsulators infused with epoxy resin. Through surface functionalisation of fibres, a high surface area electrode of 231.43 𝑚2/𝑔 was separated by a gel polymer electrolyte (GPE) separator and encapsulated in an epoxy polymer. To study the SSC’s performance, different GPEs are produced by adding lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (LiTFSI) into poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) (PVDF-HFP). The LiTFSI concentration is varied from 0% to 100% based on the weight of PVDF-HFP. The highest energy storage performance occurred at LiTFSI 60 wt% in the PVDF-HFP, with a cell-specific capacitance of 25.72 mF/g, cell-specific energy of 2.08 mWh/kg and cell-specific power of 25.04 mW/kg. With a flexural modulus of 3.39 GPa and a flexural strength of 52.07 MPa, this further develops high-performance SSCs in the future.

Files

S_Y_Chen_Structural_Supercapac... (pdf)
(pdf | 22 Mb)
Unknown license
Demo_video.mp4
(mp4 | 206 Mb)
- Embargo expired in 28-12-2023
Unknown license