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posted by janrinok on Tuesday July 07 2015, @01:40PM   Printer-friendly
from the dilithium-crystals,-they-canna'-take-it dept.

Researchers have found a promising new approach to delivering the short, intense bursts of power needed by wearable electronic devices. The key is a new approach to making supercapacitors — devices that can store and release electrical power in such bursts.

http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/nanowire-supercapacitors-energy-boost-0707

"Long-distance Wi-Fi requires a fair amount of power," says Hunter, the George N. Hatsopoulos Professor in Thermodynamics in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering, "but it may not be needed for very long." Small batteries are generally poorly suited for such power needs, he adds.

"We know it's a problem experienced by a number of companies in the health-monitoring or exercise-monitoring space. So an alternative is to go to a combination of a battery and a capacitor," Hunter says: the battery for long-term, low-power functions, and the capacitor for short bursts of high power. Such a combination should be able to either increase the range of the device, or — perhaps more important in the marketplace — to significantly reduce size requirements.

The new nanowire-based supercapacitor exceeds the performance of existing batteries, while occupying a very small volume. "If you've got an Apple Watch and I shave 30 percent off the mass, you may not even notice," Hunter says. "But if you reduce the volume by 30 percent, that would be a big deal," he says: Consumers are very sensitive to the size of wearable devices.

The innovation is especially significant for small devices, Hunter says, because other energy-storage technologies — such as fuel cells, batteries, and flywheels — tend to be less efficient, or simply too complex to be practical when reduced to very small sizes. "We are in a sweet spot," he says, with a technology that can deliver big bursts of power from a very small device.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday July 07 2015, @01:45PM

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Tuesday July 07 2015, @01:45PM (#206104)

    You don't need to come up with a convoluted scenario where someone would need a better supercapacitor. Trust me, if you invent such a thing, every person and company that makes electronics will come give you money for it.

    But, just like batteries, for every 10 announcements about a revolutionary supercapacitor breakthrough, there is only 1 actual advancement that sees use.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by AndyTheAbsurd on Tuesday July 07 2015, @03:09PM

    by AndyTheAbsurd (3958) on Tuesday July 07 2015, @03:09PM (#206135) Journal

    Part of that is what I call "premature press release syndrome". While new approaches may be exciting for people that are working in the field, making an announcement about something that won't come to market at any price for five to ten years is a great way to make your "revolutionary" change to the industry seem like old hat by the time that people can actually buy it.

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