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posted by martyb on Wednesday November 23 2016, @07:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the how-long-to-charge-a-car? dept.

A report from a team of scientists from the University of Central Florida (UCF) tells of how they have developed a new process for creating flexible supercapacitors that can store more energy and be recharged more than 30,000 times without degrading.

Scientists have been studying the use of nanomaterials to improve supercapacitors that could enhance or even replace batteries in electronic devices. It's a stubborn problem, because a supercapacitor that held as much energy as a lithium-ion battery would have to be much, much larger. The team at UCF has experimented with applying newly discovered two-dimensional materials only a few atoms thick to supercapacitors.

[...] [The] team has developed supercapacitors composed of millions of nanometer-thick wires coated with shells of two-dimensional materials. A highly conductive core facilitates fast electron transfer for fast charging and discharging. And uniformly coated shells of two-dimensional materials yield high energy and power densities.

[...] Supercapacitors that use the new materials could be used in phones and other electronic gadgets, and electric vehicles that could benefit from sudden bursts of power and speed. And because they're flexible, it could mean a significant advancement in wearable tech, as well.

Although not yet commercially ready, the team has been working with UCF's Office of Technology Transfer to patent the new process.

The full journal article in ACS Nano is paywalled but the abstract is available,


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @08:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @08:16PM (#432063)

    The Google Pixel XL apparently has a 3450 mAh battery; a 15 A current could charge a device of that capacity in 3450/15000 hours (13 minutes and 48 seconds). So, to charge a phone in seconds, you'd need a damn high current that nobody will ever have.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday November 23 2016, @08:27PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday November 23 2016, @08:27PM (#432070)

    It is low voltage, so it's not impossible to generate that much current at home. But those connectors ain't gonna fit no 8mm phone, unless you use the surface of the phone's back and do some pretty impressive power layouts.

  • (Score: 2) by PocketSizeSUn on Wednesday November 23 2016, @10:51PM

    by PocketSizeSUn (5340) on Wednesday November 23 2016, @10:51PM (#432191)

    You left out volts.
    13m 48s @ 1V

    @5V it's 1/5th the time.
    @12V it's 1/12th ...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @11:30PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @11:30PM (#432201)

      Nope. Current is all that matters; it's all that my argument depends on.

  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday November 29 2016, @09:55PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday November 29 2016, @09:55PM (#434698) Journal

    Watts = Volts * Amps

    At 100W (ie, a single bright incandescent bulb) you'd get 500mAh per minute into that battery -- 100W / 3.3V = 0.5mAh. Meaning six and a half minutes to a full charge.

    At the same current as a standard refrigerator (~1200W), you could charge that battery in thirty seconds.
    At the same current as an electric oven (~8000W) it'd charge in five seconds.

    Are you telling me nobody could possibly own an electric oven or refrigerator? Surprisingly, many homes have both, and can even use both at the same time without anything blowing up! ;) That "damn high current that nobody will ever have" is already available in pretty much any home with electricity. Although charging the phone in under 30 seconds is gonna blow some fuses for some users unless you can find a way to intelligently back off the power consumption or something.