Posted on 04/04/2015 11:46:05 AM PDT by Red Badger
The dramatic rise of smartphones, tablets, laptops and other personal and portable electronics has brought battery technology to the forefront of electronics research. Even as devices have improved by leaps and bounds, the slow pace of battery development has held back technological progress.
Now, researchers at UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute have successfully combined two nanomaterials to create a new energy storage medium that combines the best qualities of batteries and supercapacitors.
Supercapacitors are electrochemical components that can charge in seconds rather than hours and can be used for 1 million recharge cycles. Unlike batteries, however, they do not store enough power to run our computers and smartphones.
The new hybrid supercapacitor stores large amounts of energy, recharges quickly and can last for more than 10,000 recharge cycles. The CNSI scientists also created a microsupercapacitor that is small enough to fit in wearable or implantable devices. Just one-fifth the thickness of a sheet of paper, it is capable of holding more than twice as much charge as a typical thin-film lithium battery.
The study, led by Richard Kaner, distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry and materials science and engineering, and Maher El-Kady, a postdoctoral scholar, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"The microsupercapacitor is a new evolving configuration, a very small rechargeable power source with a much higher capacity than previous lithium thin-film microbatteries," El-Kady said.
The new components combine laser-scribed graphene, or LSG—a material that can hold an electrical charge, is very conductive, and charges and recharges very quickly—with manganese dioxide, which is currently used in alkaline batteries because it holds a lot of charge and is cheap and plentiful. They can be fabricated without the need for extreme temperatures or the expensive "dry rooms" required to produce today's supercapacitors.
"Let's say you wanted to put a small amount of electrical current into an adhesive bandage for drug release or healing assistance technology," Kaner said. "The microsupercapacitor is so thin you could put it inside the bandage to supply the current. You could also recharge it quickly and use it for a very long time."
The researchers found that the supercapacitor could quickly store electrical charge generated by a solar cell during the day, hold the charge until evening and then power an LED overnight, showing promise for off-grid street lighting.
"The LSG–manganese-dioxide capacitors can store as much electrical charge as a lead acid battery, yet can be recharged in seconds, and they store about six times the capacity of state-of-the-art commercially available supercapacitors," Kaner said. "This scalable approach for fabricating compact, reliable, energy-dense supercapacitors shows a great deal of promise in real-world applications, and we're very excited about the possibilities for greatly improving personal electronics technology in the near future."
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Provided by University of California, Los Angeles
The new hybrid supercapacitor developed at UCLA stores large amounts of energy, recharges quickly and can last for more than 10,000 recharge cycles. Credit: UCLA California NanoSystems Institute
Supercapacitor may have applications to EV Ping!...............
Someone finally figured put how to marry these two technologies: capacitors and batteries. CONGRATS!
I'm thinking they might need to scale it up a little and that always presents problems.
Nice to see that ProtoBoard is still around. Just looking at it brings back pleasant memories.
is the red light for when it self destructs ?
Got some right here at work. some are nearly 30 years old. It’s a must have device.............
The shorts are spectacular!
I've got some too, down in the basement. Also soldering irons, a signal generator, a digital oscilloscope, and a lifetime supply of old-fashioned rosin-core solder.
I never get to use it, though. All my design work is done in software now. I miss electronics, but I can create so much more functionality per unit time in software now that the hardware side just can't compete.
I miss it, too, because I'm a pretty good designer. Analog, digital, noise suppression, high-gain, high-bandwidth, opto-electronics, all that stuff. The thing is, it just doesn't pay to design it when you can invariably get a chip that can do it.
Then there's VHDL, and that whole world. Ah well.
Mylar most likely.............
First they will make small ones for computer devices and smartphones, then bigger for larger devices, finally cars..................
At 30 years old it’s probably time to peel of the backing and remove the tiny metal particles that can end up as shorts.
The one I use these days is 12”x24” and it is nice to have.
Had the tiny one in college and it got a bit crowded!
I have all that except the o’scope, but can borrow one. Been thinking of building high power tube amp for my pedal steel.
My early electronic experiences were with vacuum tubes, as a teenager.
I was inside an ANFSQ-7 computer (SAGE militarized version of the MIT Whirlwind) on two occasions when I was a grade-schooler. 60,000 vacuum tubes! Magnetic drum memory! 16K of core memory, and you could actually see the cores because the whole thing was housed in a cool glass box like "Spock's Brain!"
My dad worked on the SAGE system.
But just try to find a Nixie tube.
This could be a game changer.
We used a lot of Kapton polyimide and 3M high temp teflon tape for "downhole" electronic tools (350⁰F and above applications).
We had about 10 different types of tapes, from the old Okonite self vulcanizing stuff to the latest and greatest.
Some thin, high temp, high dielectric types went for $300 a 1 inch X 50 foot roll.
Liked the Teflon high temp where you had enough room to use it.
They're readily available on eBay.
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