graphene aerogel tagged posts

This schematic illustration shows the fabrication of a 3D-printed graphene aerogel/manganese oxide supercapacitor electrode. Credit: Yat Li et al., Joule, 2018

Advances in supercapacitor technology could lead to wider use of fast-charging energy storage devices and novel designs for electronic gadgets. Scientists at UC Santa Cruz and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have reported unprecedented performance results for a supercapacitor electrode. The researchers fabricated electrodes using a printable graphene aerogel to build a porous 3D scaffold loaded with pseudocapacitive material.

In laboratory tests, the novel electrodes achieved the highest areal capacitance (electric charge stored per unit of electrode surface area) ever reported for a supercapacitor, said Yat Li, profes...

3D graphene created by an international research team led by Unversity at Buffalo engineers. Credit: University at Buffalo.

The structures could be an important step toward making graphene commercially viable in electronics, medical diagnostic devices and other industries. Discovered in 2004, it is 1 million times thinner than a human hair, 300X stronger than steel and it’s the best known conductor of heat and electricity. These qualities could, among other things, make computers faster, batteries more powerful and solar panels more efficient. But the material is tough to manipulate beyond its 2D form.

Recently, scientists poured graphene oxide suspension, a gel-like form of the material, into freezing molds to create 3D objects...