Graphene-based in-plane micro-supercapacitors with high power and energy densities

Micro-supercapacitors are important on-chip micro-power sources for miniaturized electronic devices. Although the performance of micro-supercapacitors has been significantly advanced by fabricating nanostructured materials, developing thin-film manufacture technologies and device architectures, their power or energy densities remain far from those of electrolytic capacitors or lithium thin-film batteries. Here we demonstrate graphene-based in-plane interdigital micro-supercapacitors on arbitrary substrates. The resulting micro-supercapacitors deliver an area capacitance of 80.7 μF cm⁻² and a stack capacitance of 17.9 F cm⁻³. Further, they show a power density of 495 W cm⁻³ that is higher than electrolytic capacitors, and an energy density of 2.5 mWh cm⁻³ that is comparable to lithium thin-film batteries, in association with superior cycling stability. Such microdevices allow for operations at ultrahigh rate up to 1,000 V s⁻¹, three orders of magnitude higher than that of conventional supercapacitors. Micro-supercapacitors with an in-plane geometry have great promise for numerous miniaturized or flexible electronic applications.