Future energy storage supercapacitor: bendable and foldable like paper!

A team of researchers at the Plasma Physics Research Center of the Science and Research Branch of Islamic Azad University in Tehran, Iran, discovered a method of making paper supercapacitors for storing electrical energy. With only one layer of thickness, these new supercapacitors can bend, fold, and twist, while still maintaining power.

Supercapacitor refers to a device whose energy per unit volume is more than 10 times that of traditional capacitors and can be quickly charged and discharged. Compared with other types of paper supercapacitors, the paper supercapacitors developed by the team of Dr. Leila Fekri Avals are lighter, cheaper, and more flexible than earlier paper supercapacitors, providing them with new potential uses. Dr. Aval explained that in the near future, the application of industrial and self-made supercapacitors will increase, and the cost will also decrease, thus making them open to the public.

Today, if you need to store a lot of energy, you usually need to use large and heavy rechargeable batteries. Supercapacitors can also do this, but its role is greater: its charging and discharging speed is much faster than traditional batteries-it takes only a few minutes, not a few hours-and within its lifetime Charge and discharge times will be more.

Carbon exists in today's capacitors and supercapacitors in the form of carbon nanotubes, and it has the ideal performance to efficiently store energy. Since the 1950s, researchers have developed its high strength and excellent thermal and electrical conductivity; carbon has strong elasticity and flexibility and can be easily bent and stretched.

(a) Schematic diagram of a symmetric paper supercapacitor with GNPs electrode structure, (b) paper supercapacitor manufactured, (c) paper supercapacitor in a bent state. (Picture from :)

The research team investigated the structure of commercial supercapacitors and fabricated a supercapacitor using different layers of carbon nanotube paper. They use barium titanate to separate these layers, which is more economical than any alternative compound. This new paper superconductor can effectively store energy even if it is rolled or folded.

The potential applications of these new devices are very wide: medical implants, skin patches, wearable technology, and new large-scale energy storage devices for home and commercial transportation and smart packaging. For example, imagine using a tablet computer that can be rolled up and stuffed into a pocket, or a part of the jacket can become a mobile phone, or a part of clothing can be used as a battery to charge the mobile phone.

Dr. Aval expects that the commercial and local applications of these supercapacitors will soon increase and the cost will drop, so this technology will enter the mass market. Dr. Aval said that energy is our most important challenge in the future. It is important to make a device that stores energy, has high power and energy density, but has a low cost. This is what inspired us to study paper supercapacitors.

Original paper: https: //

(Originally from: Daily Science China New Energy Network Synthesis)