Development of Carbon Nanotube Yarn Supercapacitors and Energy Storage for Integrated Structural Health Monitoring

Abstract

Developing efficient, sustainable, and high-performance energy storage systems is essential for advancing various industries, including integrated structural health monitoring. Carbon nanotube yarn (CNTY) supercapacitors have the potential to be an excellent solution for this purpose because they offer unique material properties such as high capacitance, electrical conductivity, and energy and power densities. The scope of the study included fabricating supercapacitors using various materials and characterizing them to determine the capacitive properties, energy, and power densities. Experimental studies were conducted to investigate the energy density and power density behavior of CNTYs embedded in various electrochemical-active matrices to monitor the matrices’ power process and the CNTY supercapacitors’ life-cyclic response. The results showed that the CNTY supercapacitors displayed excellent capacitive behavior, with nearly rectangular CV curves across a range of scan rates. The energy density and power density of the supercapacitors fluctuated between a minimum of 3.89 Wh/kg and 8 W/kg while the maximum was between 6.46 Wh/kg and 13.20 W/kg. These CNTY supercapacitors are being tailored to power CNTY sensors integrated into a variety of structures that could monitor damage, strain, temperature, and others.