Flexible Batteries in Water

Chemical structures of CPE-K upon electrochemical doping/charging and dedoping/discharging and the difference in ion uptake in CPEs compared to typical energy storage materials

September 7, 2025 – Small devices such as medical sensors, smartwatches, and other Internet of Things tools must operate for as long as possible, deliver high performance, and be recharged within seconds. Therefore, researchers from Delft University of Technology and the National University of Singapore have developed a new generation of high-performance energy storage devices, so-called pseudocapacitors, which store a large amount of energy in a limited space and can be charged instantly.

Until now, there was a tradeoff between power and energy in energy storage devices: you can design a battery to store more energy, but it delivers that energy more slowly. Or you can design a capacitor that delivers high power quickly, but it can then store less total energy. This new technology, made from modified conductive polymers and 2D materials, solves this problem by combining high and fast energy storage with fast energy release.

The research was published on August 27th in Nature Communications under the title “Aqueous asymmetric pseudocapacitor featuring high areal energy and power using conjugated polyelectrolytes and Ti3C2Tx MXene.”

It is available online.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63034-9

Chemical structures of CPE-K upon electrochemical doping/charging and dedoping/discharging and the difference in ion uptake in CPEs compared to typical energy storage materials

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