Advanced Nanotube Supercapacitor Created at Rice

A group of physicists at the Rice University announces the completion of an advanced energy-storage device, a supercapacitor that is based on nanotubes. The instrument shows tremendous potential for use in extreme environments, which may include other worlds.

Currently, a massive international research effort is taking place to improve solid-state energy storage, and Rice investigators are maintaining themselves at the top of this quest. Their new supercapacitor holds great potential for storing and releasing electricity.

According to the research team, the instrument is capable of storing just as much energy as the most advanced batteries, while at the same time also having access to the fast-charging abilities of regular capacitors. The new study is published in the latest issue of the scientific journal Carbon.

The research team that managed to create the supercapacitor was based in the lab of Rice chemist Robert Hauge. Its members say that the new technology provides a robust and versatile energy-storage option that can be built into a wide array of devices.

In order to understand the new devices, some background about power-storing devices is needed. A standard capacitor is different from the battery through the fact that they release all the power they store in very quick bursts. They are also capable of reloading a lot faster than batteries.

In fact, a standard capacitor may go through hundreds of thousands of charge/recharge cycles, while a battery may only go through a few hundreds. In order to boost the amount of electricity that a capacitor device could holds, experts created supercapacitors.

Technically known as electric double-layer capacitors (EDLC), these devices contain liquid or gel-like electrolytes that enable them to hold more power. However, this solution makes them unstable and unreliable in extreme environments.

What the Rice team did was develop an EDLC that replaces all liquid or gel components with solid-state materials. The device has the same properties, but can now work in any environment imaginable.

In order to achieve this, experts used carbon nanotubes, since the materials give electrons inside the supercapacitor the largest surface area to hold on to. Each tiny power chip the experts created contains hundreds of thousands of CNT bundles, each of which is 500 times longer than wider.