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Industrial scale production of fibre batteries by a solution-extrusion method

Nature Nanotechnology volume 17, pages 372–377 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Fibre batteries are of significant interest because they can be woven into flexible textiles to form compact, wearable and light-weight power solutions1,2. However, current methods adapted from planar batteries through layer-by-layer coating processes can only make fibre batteries with low production rates, which fail to meet the requirements for real applications2. Here, we present a new and general solution-extrusion method that can produce continuous fibre batteries in a single step at industrial scale. Our three-channel industrial spinneret simultaneously extrudes and combines electrodes and electrolyte of fibre battery at high production rates. The laminar flow between functional components guarantees their seamless interfaces during extrusion. Our method yields 1,500 km of continuous fibre batteries for every spinneret unit, that is, more than three orders of magnitude longer fibres than previously reported1,2. Finally, we show a proof-of-principle for roughly 10 m2 of woven textile for smart tent applications, with a battery with energy density of 550 mWh m−2.

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Fig. 1: Extrusion process and structural characterization of fibre batteries.
Fig. 2: Continuous solution-extrusion method for producing aqueous Li-ion, Zn-Mn and Na-ion fibre batteries.
Fig. 3: Applications of textile battery made from FLIBs.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the Supplementary Information or the corresponding authors on request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (grant no. 2016YFA0203302 to H.P.), National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 21634003 to H.P., 22075050 to X. Sun, 21805044 to P.C.), Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (grant nos. 20JC1414902 to H.P., 18QA1400700 to B.W., 19QA1400800 to P.C.) and Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (grant no. 2017-01-07-00-07-E00062 to H.P.). We thank A.-L. Chun of Science Storylab for critically reading and editing the manuscript and Y. Zhang for important suggestions.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Meng Liao, Chuang Wang, Yang Hong.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Department of Macromolecular Science and Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Meng Liao, Chuang Wang, Yang Hong, Yanfeng Zhang, Xunliang Cheng, Hao Sun, Xinlin Huang, Lei Ye, Jingxia Wu, Xiang Shi, Xinyue Kang, Xufeng Zhou, Jiawei Wang, Pengzhou Li, Xuemei Sun, Peining Chen, Bingjie Wang & Huisheng Peng

  2. Department of Chemistry and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, Institute of New Energy, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Yonggang Wang & Yongyao Xia

  3. State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Materials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Donghua University, Shanghai, China

    Yanhua Cheng

Authors
  1. Meng Liao
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Contributions

H.P. and B.W. conceived and designed the research project. M.L., C.W. and Y.H. performed the experiments on solution-extruded fibre batteries, textile batteries and integration systems, and contributed equally to this work. Y.Z., X.C., H.S. and L.Y. performed electrochemical measurements of functional inks. X.H. performed the simulation. J. Wu, X. Shi and X.Z. performed experiments on the display textile. X.K. performed the experiments on the photovoltaic textile. J. Wang and P.L. analysed the data. X. Sun, P.C., Y.W., Y.X., Y.C. and all other authors discussed the data and wrote the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Bingjie Wang or Huisheng Peng.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review information

Nature Nanotechnology thanks Sheng Yong, Xinbo Zhang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Materials and Methods, Supplementary Figs. 1–21, Tables 1 and 2, Captions for Videos 1–8 and References.

Supplementary Video 1

Continuous production of fibre batteries.

Supplementary Video 2

FLIB textile charges a phone.

Supplementary Video 3

FLIB textile charges a phone under folding.

Supplementary Video 4

FLIB textile charges a phone when heated by a flame.

Supplementary Video 5

FLIB textile charges a phone when punctured by a blade.

Supplementary Video 6

FLIB textile charges a phone after washing.

Supplementary Video 7

FLIB textile charges a phone when rolled on by a motorbike.

Supplementary Video 8

Weaving the textile display for the smart tent system.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Source data for Fig. 1.

Source Data Fig. 2

Source data for Fig. 1.

Source Data Fig. 3

Source data for Fig. 1.

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Liao, M., Wang, C., Hong, Y. et al. Industrial scale production of fibre batteries by a solution-extrusion method. Nat. Nanotechnol. 17, 372–377 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-021-01062-4

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