High performance flexible silk fabric electrodes with antibacterial, flame retardant and UV resistance for supercapacitors and sensors.

High-performance textile electrodes exhibit considerable potential for use as electronic devices in the wearable energy field. As silk fibroin protein can be dissolved, silk fabric is pretreated with a ternary solvent (CaCl 2 /C 2 H 5 OH/H 2 O) to increase the specific surface area of the substrate and the active material loading. The area capacitance of this fabricated electrode with ternary solvent treatment (PANI@TS-silk fabric, 4091.43 mF/cm2) is 2.3 times that of an electrode prepared without ternary solvent treatment (PANI@WTS-silk fabric, 1811.43 mF/cm2) and higher than the reported area capacitance of currently used flexible electrodes prepared using pure polyaniline. The capacitance retention rate of the PANI@TS -silk fabric electrode can reach 99.54% after 3000 charge-discharge cycles. The electrode can be used as a flexible sensor with stable performance under 2000 mechanical deformation. In addition, PANI@TS-silk fabric possesses good flame retardant performance, antimicrobial properties and UV resistance. These results suggest that the prepared PANI coated silk fabric has broad potential applications to wearable textiles. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]