Printing energy storage at the touch of a button

The ink, developed by a collaboration between Drexel University in Philadelphia and Trinity College, Dublin, is based on a highly-conductive two-dimensional material called MXene, which was invented by Yury Gogotsi and colleagues at Drexel in 2011. According to Gogotsi, who has also led the current research, it is more conductive and more easily applied to a range of different surfaces than previous conductive inks.

MXenes are a family of two-dimensional transition metal carbides and nitrites. In Gogotsi’s earlier work, he produced planar nanocrystals by exfoliating titanium aluminium carbide, which is a typical member of the family showing a layered structure known as a MAX phase, a kind of ductile and machineable ceramic.

"So far only limited success has been achieved with conductive inks in both fine-resolution printing and high charge storage devices," Gogotsi said. "But our findings show that all-MXene printed micro-supercapacitors, made with an advanced inkjet printer, are an order of magnitude greater than existing energy storage devices made from other conductive inks."