Evaluation of a 3D-printing electrically conductive material for energy storage devices fabrication

3D printing, also known as Additive Manufacturing (AM), is a revolution in manufacturing techniques based on layer-by-layer fabrication. Thanks to its flexibility, such technique finds application in different areas. Stereolithography is probably the most consolidated 3D printing technology; it was developed in the 1970s and it is based on the curing of a photosensitive blend (namely resin) by laser-scanning. The resin can be structural or functional. The present thesis work is set in the context of the study of a functional resin (electrically conductive) for stereolithography, which was developed in previous works. The printable material is obtained by mixing PEDOT: PSS particles, which is the intrinsically conductive polymer, as a filler with PEGDA matrix and photoinitiator. In this work, a 3D interdigitated supercapacitor was designed, manufactured, and tested to explore the application in the energy field of this material. The final device consists in an alumina substrate, on which the stereolithography 3D-printed supercapacitor is fixed and enclosed in a silicone chamber. For testing purposes, the chamber was filled with the PVA KCl electrolyte. At the end, our device achieved a good capacity of 19.45 mF/cm2 with 5 μA/cm2 current density in the Charge Discharge Galvanostatic test. The electrically conductive resin revealed a good capacity retention of 95% after 500 cycles with 10 μA/cm2 current density charge-discharge.