Emerging Challenges in Textile Energy Electrodes: Interfacial Engineering for High-Performance Next-Generation Flexible Energy Storage Devices

The development of highly conductive fibril-type textile electrodes is crucial for the advancement of various smart wearable electronics including high-performance energy storage devices. To achieve this goal, it is essential to convert insulating textiles into conductive counterparts while maintaining flexibility and porosity. Additionally, the incorporation of electrochemically active components into textile conductors enables tailor-made textile energy electrodes for specific applications. Thus, textile conductors act not only as conductors but also as energy reservoirs for energy-active components, providing a facile electron transfer network. However, textile conductors fabricated by most existing methods face challenges such as low conductivity, blockage, and brittleness. One approach to overcome these problems is to utilize interfacial interactions between individual components and textiles. Conductive nanoparticle assembly and electrodeposition based on such rational design result in highly conductive, flexible, and large surface area textile conductors. The subsequent guided assembly of active components creates high-performance textile energy electrodes. This perspective describes how interfacial interaction-based assembly can enhance the performance of textile conductors and textile energy electrodes. It also explores various conductor preparation approaches and recent advances in the field for applications in supercapacitors and lithium-ion batteries.