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 (CNT) yarn 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 density. This study aimed to develop CNTY supercapacitors that can be integrated into polymeric and composite materials to power CNTY sensors that can measure current density, voltage, time charge, and discharge. The focus of this study was on the fabrication, characterization, and exploration of various configurations that could come from using CNT yarn supercapacitors to integrated structural health monitoring while also examining its development process involving carbon nanotubes' synthesis formations, preparing electrodes, and then assembling a supercapacitor. These capacitors are extraordinary with their characteristics displaying a very high-power density and rapid charge/discharge rates accompanied by exceptional cycling stability, making them perfect for use within integrated structural health monitors where efficiency in storing energy matters, just like having lightweight components, which remains crucial. Those included fabricating the supercapacitors using various materials, characterizing them to determine the capacitive properties, energy, and power densities, integrating them to power the sensors, and allowing data acquisition from the latter. Initially, 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.