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A team from the National University of Singapore's Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Initiative (NUSNNI), led by principle investigator Dr Xie Xian Ning, has developed the world's first energy-storage membrane. Electrical energy storage and its management is becoming an urgent issue due to climate change and energy shortage. Existing technologies such as rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors are based on complicated configurations including liquid electrolytes, and suffer from difficulties in scaling-up and high fabrication costs. There is also growing public concern and awareness of the impact of traditional energy sources on the environment, spurring a continued search for alternative, green, sustainable energy sources....

New energy-storage technology could surpass today's batteries in capacity and durability. A startup called Nanotune says its ultracapacitor technology could make electric cars cheaper and extend their range. The company, based in Mountain View, California, has developed a way to make electrodes that results in ultracapacitors with five to seven times as much storage capacity as conventional ones. Conventional ultracapacitors, which have the advantage of delivering fast bursts of power and can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times without losing much capacity, are too expensive and store too little energy to replace batteries. Nanotune, however, which has raised $3...

EEStor is the urban legend of a startup that is said to be building a supercapacitor material that would store more energy and charge and discharge faster than previous materials by a factor of ten. If true, it could change the technology of electric vehicle charging and utility-scale energy storage. We've made repeated attempts to contact the company and its CEO, Dick Weir, to no avail. Here is some of our EEStor coverage from last year, which includes a musical lament. The firm's website is no longer online and the usual fevered musings of the EEStor blogosphere have slowed. Here's...

We've been closely following EEStor's potentially game-changing ultracapacitor--a technology that could allow for electric cars that charge almost instantaneously and drive hundreds of miles on a single charge. And if a purportedly "leaked" phone conversation from EEStor CEO Richard Weir currently making the rounds is legit, the long-in-development ultracapacitor has hit a breakthrough, and could be unveiled within months. ... EEStor's ultracapacitor works more or less exactly like the capacitors found in electronics today, briefly holding and releasing small charges, only on a much larger scale; it would be able rapidly take on enough juice to power a car for...

Kindest and warmest regards to wasmaba, for his financial support! First / raw / initial draft. Certain to be some errors, mistakes, ommissions, typos and various other flaws. http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5577862/14646725 Audio .mp3 provided courtesy of smackYYZ and "Audacity" software. W: is Dick Weir I: is Interviewer, unknown, at time of transcribing W: Well, ahh, the basic building block that we use here and that both Carl and I have extensive knowledge of is Composition Modified Barium Titanate powder. 0:10 Well known the best powders of the highest permittivity of any materials in the world. Although they have some very significant problems....