Assessment of a Cyclic Bending Test Method for Printed Flexible Supercapacitor

Printed flexible supercapacitor (SC) is seen as an attractive alternative to replace batteries as energy storage unit in energy autonomous sensors. This paper assesses a cyclic bending test method for printed flexible SC. The test is evaluated using four material stacks for printed SC in five different bending radii. The measurement system analysis (MSA) found that the calculated bending radii under all test conditions exhibit variation within a range of 0.3 mm, and the variation takes up less than 8% of bending radius. The measurement system is subjected to 9% total variation, which is within acceptable range. The variation was mainly caused by the uneven thickness distribution across the SC due to its structure. Thus, the variation caused by the test method and measurement is even smaller. In addition, the SC’s bending radius subjected to even smaller variation in cyclic bending test. These indicate that this test method is highly reliable and repeatable for evaluating flexible SC.