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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,
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday November 23 2016, @10:20PM
Umm... I believe the TFA is talking about using supercapacitors to power devices like your phone... not batteries. For consumers I suppose "battery" just mean whatever that can store power to be used by their devices to play Pokemon Go that needs to be plugged for refill when it runs low.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday November 24 2016, @12:20AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Supercapacitors-vs-batteries-chart.png
Some modern batteries have greater power density (the feature that capacitors are desireable for) than older supercapacitors.
And some modern supercapacitors have greater energy density (the feature that batteries are desireable for) than older batteries.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by anotherblackhat on Thursday November 24 2016, @05:01PM
... some modern supercapacitors have greater energy density (the feature that batteries are desireable for) than older batteries.
I'm unaware of any, do you have a link?
The best supercapacitor I know of has an energy density of 11.3 Joules/gram (3 Watt hours / kilogram)
Carbon-zinc batteries are close to the worst battery in terms of energy density at 130 J/g (36 Wh/kg) - still an order of magnitude better.
Alkaline batteries are 110 Wh/kg, and lithium-ion are around 130 Wh/kg.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday November 27 2016, @07:09PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves