Printable Tin Cobalt Oxide Ink Powers Supercapacitors and Sensors Alike

Researchers at the Manipal Institute of Technology, part of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education in India, have developed a single screen-printable conductive ink that can be used to fabricate three very different microelectronic devices: micro-supercapacitors for on-chip energy storage, humidity sensors, and electrochemical sensors capable of detecting pharmaceutical compounds. The work, published as an open-access paper in Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials, addresses a persistent bottleneck in miniaturised electronics, where energy storage components and sensing elements are typically built from different materials using different, often expensive, fabrication routes. By formulating one ink that performs well in all three roles, the team has demonstrated a scalable and affordable platform for next-generation microdevices.

The active ingredient of the ink is a pseudocapacitive spinel oxide, tin cobalt oxide with the chemical formula SnCo2O4, combined with conductive carbon nanofibers. Spinel oxides of this kind are attractive for electrochemical applications because their crystal structure offers multiple accessible oxidation states, allowing fast and reversible redox reactions at the electrode surface. In an energy storage context, this pseudocapacitive behaviour means charge is stored not only electrostatically at the interface between electrode and electrolyte, as in a conventional double-layer capacitor, but also through faradaic charge-transfer reactions that can substantially increase the amount of energy packed into a given area. The carbon nanofibers serve as a highly conductive skeletal framework that threads through the oxide particles, providing continuous pathways for electrons and helping to anchor the active material mechanically.

Screen printing was chosen as the deposition technique because it is one of the most manufacturing-friendly methods available for printed electronics. In screen printing, a viscous paste or ink is forced through a patterned mesh onto a substrate, allowing large areas to be patterned quickly with minimal material waste and without the vacuum equipment or photolithography required by conventional microfabrication. The challenge lies in formulating an ink whose rheology, viscosity, and solids loading allow clean transfer through the mesh while retaining the electrochemical activity of the functional particles. The researchers optimised the composition of the SnCo2O4 and carbon nanofiber blend, identifying a formulation designated SC-3 that delivered the best balance of conductivity, printability, and charge-storage performance.

When printed as micro-supercapacitor electrodes, the SC-3 material exhibited both pseudocapacitive and electric double-layer capacitive charge-storage mechanisms, a hybrid behaviour that combines the high power and long cycle life of double-layer storage with the higher capacitance of faradaic materials. The printed electrodes achieved an areal capacitance of 673.8 plus or minus 3.1 millifarads per square centimetre, an energy density of 93.58 plus or minus 1.5 microwatt-hours per square centimetre, and a power density of 1.353 plus or minus 3.0 milliwatts per square centimetre. These figures were reported with a relative standard deviation below one percent across three replicate measurements, indicating a high degree of reproducibility in the printing process. For microscale energy applications, where the electrode area is measured in square centimetres or less, such areal metrics are the relevant benchmarks rather than gravimetric values.

The same ink proved equally capable when deployed in sensing devices. A humidity sensor printed from the SC-3 formulation showed excellent operational stability, fast response and recovery times of 38 and 56 seconds respectively, low hysteresis of 1.46 percent, and a wide detection range spanning relative humidity values from 11 to 97 percent. Low hysteresis is a particularly important figure of merit for humidity sensors because it reflects how consistently the sensor returns to its baseline resistance after exposure to moist and dry conditions, a property that determines whether repeated measurements can be trusted without recalibration. The wide dynamic range means a single printed sensor could operate reliably in environments as different as dry indoor air and near-saturated tropical conditions.

The third application demonstrated by the team is arguably the most medically significant. When the SC-3 material was used to modify a screen-printed electrode, abbreviated SPE, the resulting electrochemical sensor exhibited excellent behaviour in detecting naproxen, a widely used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. The sensor operated across a broad drug concentration range from 1 micromolar to 500 micromolar, covering concentrations relevant to both pharmaceutical quality control and environmental monitoring of waterways, where accumulated drug residues have become an emerging concern. Long-term stability testing showed that the sensor could measure naproxen reliably in tablet samples and in synthetic urine, with a relative standard deviation of 3.53 percent, plus or minus 0.72, demonstrating practical analytical performance beyond idealised laboratory conditions.

The researchers attribute the multifunctional performance to the interplay between the carbon nanofiber framework and the redox-active SnCo2O4. The nanofibers create a percolating conductive network that lowers the overall resistance of the printed film, while the spinel oxide contributes abundant active sites for both faradaic charge storage and surface reactions involved in sensing. In the humidity sensor, the oxide surface likely adsorbs water molecules and facilitates proton conduction, while in the electrochemical sensor the redox-active oxide catalyses the electron-transfer reaction of naproxen at the electrode surface. A single material satisfying these distinct physical mechanisms is what makes the platform genuinely multifunctional rather than a collection of coincidental performances.

The broader significance of the work lies in how it tackles the shortcomings of conventional standalone energy storage and sensing devices. Traditionally, a designer building a self-powered sensing node would need to integrate a supercapacitor made of one material system with a sensor made of another, often requiring incompatible deposition processes, adhesion layers, and thermal treatments. A single ink that can be printed into any of these device architectures simplifies supply chains, reduces fabrication steps, and opens the door to fully printed integrated systems in which energy storage and sensing elements are deposited side by side on the same substrate in the same manufacturing run. This is precisely the kind of process integration that printed electronics and the Internet of Things have long demanded.

The study also carries implications for sustainability and cost. Tin and cobalt oxides are relatively abundant compared with some of the precious-metal catalysts used in high-end electrochemical sensors, and carbon nanofibers can be produced at scale. Because the ink is screen-printable at ambient conditions, it does not require energy-intensive vacuum deposition, and the additive nature of printing means far less material is wasted compared with etch-based patterning. The authors describe their formulation as a scalable, affordable, multifunctional conductive ink platform aimed squarely at next-generation miniaturised microelectronics, positioning it as a practical route from laboratory materials chemistry to manufacturable devices.

The research, led by Shilpa Shetty, Mohammad Saquib, Selvakumar M, and Ramakrishna Nayak at the Manipal Institute of Technology, was published open access on 11 September 2026 in Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials, with Shetty supported by a Dr T. M. A. Pai Fellowship from the Manipal Academy of Higher Education. As wearable health monitors, environmental sensor networks, and self-powered microdevices proliferate, the demand for materials that can store energy and sense their environment within the same printed footprint will only grow. This single-ink strategy, validated across three distinct device classes with quantified performance metrics, offers a compelling template for how multifunctional materials can compress device fabrication into a single, scalable printing step.

Subject of Research: A screen-printable multifunctional conductive ink based on tin cobalt oxide decorated carbon nanofibers for energy storage and sensing devices

Article Title: A single screen-printable multifunctional active ink platform based on tin cobalt oxide decorated carbon nanofibers for energy storage and sensing applications

Article References: Shetty, S., Saquib, M., M, S., & Nayak, R. (2026). A single screen-printable multifunctional active ink platform based on tin cobalt oxide decorated carbon nanofibers for energy storage and sensing applications. Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42114-026-02070-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s42114-026-02070-5

Keywords: conductive ink, screen printing, tin cobalt oxide, carbon nanofibers, micro-supercapacitors, energy storage, humidity sensor, electrochemical sensor, naproxen detection, spinel oxide, printed electronics, sensors