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With the continual increase in CO2 levels and toward a sustainable society, developing high-performance lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is crucial. A suitable electrode design is the key to enhancing the quality of battery cells (e.g., cycle retention characteristics and rate capabilities), and the binder plays an important role in providing sufficient adhesion between the active material, conductive agent, and current collector. Despite significant advances in the development of novel binder materials and solutions that can be employed as anode and cathode materials, careful investigations and summaries of the assessment methods for binder materials remain lacking. In this review, we examine the different analyses used to assess the quality of binder materials and how they help in assessing the quality of the electrode design. In addition, future perspectives on binder assessment are presented, which can be applied to future research directed toward binder development for advanced LIBs or post-LIBs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbonaceous materials are attractive active materials for the manufacture of flexible electrochemical double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) because of their high electrical conductivity, large surface area, and inherent resilience against deformation. However, compared to pseudocapacitors, which store electrochemical energy via faradaic redox reactions, EDLCs generally exhibit inferior energy density. One potential approach to addressing this issue is to incorporate highly porous and electrically conductive materials into carbonaceous material-based EDLCs. In this paper, we present a hybrid electrode consisting of a conductive metal-organic framework (c-MOF) with high electrical conductivity and unique porous structure combined with a mat of aligned carbon nanofibers (ACNFs). Its highly ordered structure facilitates electronic/ionic transport, increasing the areal capacitance by up to 3.9 times compared to randomly-oriented carbon nanofibers (RCNFs). An additional increase in areal capacitance (+64%) is achieved by introducing c-MOF (RCNFs: 25.4 mF cm -2 ; ACNFs: 98.7 mF cm -2 ; c-MOF/ACNF: 161.8 mF cm -2 ). Additionally, an ACNF mat exhibits excellent mechanical flexibility and electrochemical reliability, making it highly suitable for the assembly of freestanding flexible supercapacitors. By optimizing the electrochemical performance of c-MOF/ACNF and its suitability for utilization in flexible energy storage systems, this study presents a promising avenue for the practical implementation of c-MOF-based supercapacitors., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interests., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)