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Acid Ratio-Engineered Carbon Fiber for Enhanced Interfacial Adhesion and Electrochemical Response of Ni-Coated CoVSe Electrodes for Wearable Supercapacitor Applications

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Abstract

The development of wearable and flexible electronic gadgets has increased the demand for advanced energy storage systems that can operate under contorted conditions. In this context, carbon fiber cloth (CFC) has attracted considerable attention as a flexible current collector. However, the intrinsically low surface hydrophilicity of CFC limits the uniform growth of electroactive materials. This study focuses on tuning the surface properties of CFC through mixed-acid (HNO3/H2SO4) treatment to enhance its wettability and surface reactivity. As a result, a maximum contact angle of 39.8° was achieved after 100 s of acid mixture treatment. The improved surface wettability enabled the uniform electrodeposition of cobalt vanadium selenide (CVS), forming interconnected nanosheet-like arrays on the optimized CFC substrate. Subsequently, Ni was deposited onto the optimized electrode to introduce additional redox-active sites and promote synergistic electrochemical interactions with the CVS structure, leading to enhanced charge-storage capability. As a result, a maximum areal capacitance of 2300 mF cm-2 was achieved. The optimized electrode was used as an anode with activated carbon as a cathode to assemble a quasi-solid-state hybrid supercapacitor (QsHSC). The assembled device exhibited capacitance retention and Coulombic efficiency of 93% and 99%, respectively, after 10000 galvanostatic charge–discharge cycles.

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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (RS-2024-00339770) and the Korea Environment Industry & Technology Institute (KEITI) through the Technology Development Project for Biological Hazards Management in Indoor Air Program funded by the Korea Ministry of Environment (ARQ202101038001).

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Author notes

  1. Edugulla Girija Shankar and Jongwoo Hong have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, 120-749, Republic of Korea

    Edugulla Girija Shankar, Jongwoo Hong, Chanmin Lee, Junghyun Joo & Seong Chan Jun

  2. Department of Energy Systems Research, Ajou University, Suwon, 16499, Republic of Korea

    Indhujasri Saravanan & In Sun Cho

  3. Department of Material Science and Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon, 16499, Republic of Korea

    Indhujasri Saravanan & In Sun Cho

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  1. Edugulla Girija Shankar
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  2. Jongwoo Hong
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  3. Indhujasri Saravanan
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  4. Chanmin Lee
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  5. Junghyun Joo
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Contributions

Conceptualization, E.G.S. and J.H.; methodology, E.G.S. and J.H.; investigation, I.S., C.L., J.J.; formal analysis, E.G.S., J.H., I.S., C.L., J.J. and I.S.C.; writing—original draft, E.G.S.; writing—review and editing, J.H.; supervision, S.C.J.; funding acquisition, S.C.J.

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Correspondence to Seong Chan Jun.

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Shankar, E.G., Hong, J., Saravanan, I. et al. Acid Ratio-Engineered Carbon Fiber for Enhanced Interfacial Adhesion and Electrochemical Response of Ni-Coated CoVSe Electrodes for Wearable Supercapacitor Applications. Adv. Fiber Mater. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42765-026-00743-w

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