Co-authors​ :

 Oliver HUBERT , Woodward ROBERT , Alexander BISMARCK (AUSTRIA) 

Structural composite supercapacitors can both carry load and store electrical energy. The realization of truly multifunctional composites will allow for the reduction of the total weight of electric vehicles and aircraft by permitting to incorporate parts of the energy storage system into the vehicle structure. Carbon fibres can be used simultaneously as mechanical reinforcement and electrodes in energy storage devices. The challenge is to modify them to produce a high specific surface area and hence a high specific capacity of the final supercapacitor. Usually such a modification requires sophisticated methods, which are not easily scalable such as the the production of carbon aerogel coatings. Electrophoretic deposition of high specific surface area carbon materials, such as graphene or hypercrosslinked polymers, onto spread tow carbon fibre surfaces is an easy route to manufacture structural electrodes for supercapacitors, and is also scalable.
We will demonstrate that electrophoretic deposition of materials to enhance active surface area of carbon fibres is suitable to produce large high surface area carbon fibre electrodes that can be integrated into structural electrolytes. In the structural supercapacitors produced the high specific surface area of the electrodes translates into high-capacity supercapacitors. We then used these coated carbon fibres as reinforcement in a structural composite, without using a separator. The composite was able to carry load and store energy up to 700 mF/g.