SoylentNews

AndyTheAbsurd [soylentnews.org] writes:

Nitrogen can triple the energy storage capacity of carbon-based supercapacitors [ieee.org], researchers in China and the United States say, potentially helping make them competitive against some advanced batteries.

Supercapacitors can capture and release energy much more quickly than batteries, but they usually can store less energy. Most supercapacitors in use today use carbon-based electrodes, because their high-surface area stores more charge. "We are able to make carbon a much better supercapacitor," says Fuqiang Huang, a material chemist at the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics.

The scientists began with a framework of porous silica and lined the pores with carbon. They next etched away the silica, leaving porous tubes 4 to 6 nanometers wide, each made of five or less layers of graphene-like carbon.

Original Submission