Herein, we introduce a fully stretchable lithium-ion battery system for free-form configurations in which all components, including electrodes, current collectors, separators, and encapsulants, are intrinsically stretchable and printable.
Stretchable lithium-ion batteries must provide stable performance while subjected to mechanical deformations such as stretching, bending, and twisting. Although there has been a noticeable progress in the development of flexible energy storage devices, stretchable lithium-ion batteries still face several persistent challenges.
A stretchable Li-ion battery based on this gradient PU/AuNP stretchable conductor showed a good charge-discharge rate capability (100 mAh g −1 at a current density of 0.5 A g −1) and a remarkable cycle retention (96% after 1000 cycles), which can light up orange LEDs connected in series even under a 30% stretched state.
Using such dip-coated intrinsically stretchable electrodes, various stretchable batteries, including Na-ion battery, Li-ion battery, Zn–MnO 2 battery, have been fabricated to exhibit reasonable electrochemical performance and robust mechanical deformability.
Generally, there are two main strategies to create stretchable batteries: (1) Stretchable design structures , , , , , and (2) stretchable materials and components , .
Rogers’ group also reported stretchable lithium-ion batteries based on serpentine interconnects similar to the designs proposed for the stretchable electronics . Various strategies have been applied to fabricate flexible and stretchable energy storage devices.