Silicon Supercapacitor Promises Built-in Energy Storage For Electronic Devices 95
Science_afficionado writes "A news release from Vanderbilt University begins, 'Solar cells that produce electricity 24/7, not just when the sun is shining. Mobile phones with built-in power cells that recharge in seconds and work for weeks between charges. These are just two of the possibilities raised by a novel supercapacitor design invented by material scientists ... that is described in a paper published in the Oct. 22 issue of the journal Scientific Reports. It is the first supercapacitor that is made out of silicon so it can be built into a silicon chip along with the microelectronic circuitry that it powers. In fact, it should be possible to construct these power cells out of the excess silicon that exists in the current generation of solar cells, sensors, mobile phones and a variety of other electromechanical devices, providing a considerable cost savings. ... Instead of storing energy in chemical reactions the way batteries do, “supercaps” store electricity by assembling ions on the surface of a porous material. As a result, they tend to charge and discharge in minutes, instead of hours, and operate for a few million cycles, instead of a few thousand cycles like batteries.' The full academic paper is available online."
Re:Meh (Score:2, Informative)
Call me when a supercap has anything like the energy density - by any measure of cubic or weight - as a battery. Till then, they have only niche uses. I've seen various supercap articles that were about tech that was "About to change the world" for how many decades now? OK, sooner or later, they might...I'm still waiting, and I ain't gonna live for as many more decades as I've already been waiting. Till then, I'll drive my Volt.
DCFusor, you forgot one thing to be informative.
The article states their power density around 13wh/kg in one of their diagrams.
While l-ion batteries are up to 1500 wh/kg (common ones are however much less often around 500 wh/kg)
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
I used a few of them in hobbyist high-power engineering to power the solonoid on an experiment. Five hundred amps DC at 12V with ease.
Not a "supercap "you didn't
They tend to have several ohms ESR. Low ESR supercaps are in the realm of 100m ohms. 500A at 12V requires a total system impedance of 0.024R.
Re:Meh (Score:4, Informative)
500 Wh/kg is higher than any shipping lithium ion battery that I've ever heard of, so I'm going to say that your numbers are complete BS.
500 Wh/kg is available from lithium batteries, but not from rechargeable ones. Rechargeable ones are less than half of that.
Re:Meh (Score:3, Informative)
Geeze - just hit Wikipedia and (assuming the sock puppets haven't been at it), look at the specific energy:
100–265 Wh/kg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery
Nothing like trolling by a factor of 10 in the morning.