supercapacitors tagged posts

1. The breakthrough electrode prototype (right) can be combined with a solar cell (left) for on-chip energy harvesting and storage.
2. A western swordfern leaf magnified 400 times, showing the self-repeating fractal pattern of its veins.

Graphene-based electrode prototype, inspired by fern leaves, could be the answer to solar energy storage challenge. Inspired by an American fern, researchers have developed a groundbreaking prototype that could be the answer to the storage challenge still holding solar back as a total energy solution. The new type of electrode created by researchers from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, could boost the capacity of existing integrable storage technologies by 3000%.

But the graphene-based prototype also opens a new path to the development of flexible ...

Fabrication schematic of ordered mesoporous fewlayer carbon (OMFLC). Credit: Science (2015). DOI: 10.1126/science.aab3798

Like a battery, a capacitor is able to hold a charge, unlike a battery, however, it is able to be charged and discharged very quickly—the down side to capacitors is that they cannot hold nearly as much charge/ kg as batteries. The work by the team in China is a step towards increasing the amount of charge that can be held by supercapacitors (capacitors that have much higher capacitance than standard capacitors—they generally employ carbon-based electrodes)—in this case, they report a 3X increase using their new method—noting also that that their supercapacitor was capable of storing 41 watt-hours per kilogram and could deliver 26 kilowatts per kilogram to a device...