Fiber-based supercapacitors (FSCs) are new members of the energy storage family. They present excellent flexibility and have promising applications in lightweight, flexible, and wearable devices. One of the existing challenges of FSCs is enhancing their energy density while retaining the flexibility. We developed a facile and cost-effective method to fabricate a highly capacitive positive electrode based on hierarchical ferric-cobalt-nickel ternary oxide nanowire arrays/graphene fibers and a negative electrode based on polyaniline-derived carbon nanorods/graphene fibers. The elegant microstructures and excellent electrochemical performances of both electrodes enabled us to construct a highperformance flexible asymmetric graphene fiber-based supercapacitor device with an operating voltage of 1.4 V, a specific capacitance up to 61.58 mF·cm–2, and an energy density reaching 16.76 μW·h·cm–2. Moreover, the optimal device presents an outstanding cycling stability with 87.5% initial capacitance retention after 8, 000 cycles, and an excellent flexibility with a capacitance retention of 90.9% after 4, 000 cycles of repetitive bending.
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Temperature measurement in biology and medical diagnostics, along with sensitive temperature probing in living cells, is of great importance; however, it still faces significant challenges. Metal nanoclusters (NCs) with attractive luminescent properties may be promising candidates to overcome such challenges. Here, a novel one-step synthetic method is presented to prepare highly fluorescent copper NCs (CuNCs) in ambient conditions by using glutathione (GSH) as both the reducing agent and the protective layer preventing the aggregation of the as-formed NCs. The resultant CuNCs, with an average diameter of 2.3 nm, contain 1-3 atoms and exhibit red fluorescence (λem = 610 nm) with high quantum yields (QYs, up to 5.0%). Interestingly, the fluorescence signal of the CuNCs is reversibly responsive to the environmental temperature in the range of 15-80 ℃. Furthermore, as the CuNCs exhibit good biocompatibility, they can pervade the MC3T3-E1 cells and enable measurements over the physiological temperature range of 15-45 ℃ with the use of the confocal fluorescence imaging method. In view of the facile synthesis method and attractive fluorescence properties, the as-prepared CuNCs may be used as photoluminescence thermometers and biosensors.