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Page 14 of 17 Zhang et al. Soft Sci. 2026, 6, 16

CONCLUSION
To enhance the cycling stability of Electrochemically anodized SS as a free-standing electrode for flexible
supercapacitor applications, a carbon film was successfully deposited on its surface via ECR sputtering. The
results showed that the carbon film-coated electrode achieved an areal capacitance of 271.6 mF·cm ,
-2
representing a 2.24-fold improvement over the uncoated electrode. More importantly, the capacitance
retention increased to 88.7% after 8,000 GCD cycles under the optimized conditions of a +100 V bias voltage
and a deposition time of 10 min. This enhancement was attributed to the increased deposition bias voltage,
which led to a higher sp2/sp3 ratio and lower electrode resistivity, as confirmed by XPS, Raman spectroscopy,
and four-probe measurements. This work elucidates the structure-activity relationship between the carbon
coating and capacitive behavior and provides a viable strategy for fabricating high-performance
two-dimensional or flexible energy storage devices.

DECLARATIONS
Authors’ contributions
Methodology, formal analysis, investigation, data curation, visualization, and writing - original draft: Zhang,
W.; Liu, Z.; Liu, J.; Chai, C.; Xue, P.
Conceptualization, supervision, project administration, writing - review and editing: Li, G.; Yuan, Z.; Yang,
L.

Availability of data and materials
All data are available in the main text, the Supplementary Materials or the Supplementary Video. Further
information can be obtained from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

AI and AI-assisted tools statement
Not applicable.

Financial support and sponsorship
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52275568, 52005363) and
the Fundamental Research Program of Shanxi Province (202403021221056).

Conflicts of interest
All authors declared that there are no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval and consent to participate
Not applicable.

Consent for publication
Not applicable.

Copyright
© The Author(s) 2026.

Supplementary Materials
Supplementary Materials

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