Woven carbon-graphene shorts ...
Holy electron, Batman! That's a pretty awesome flux capacitor yer sparkin' there!
Get BENT: Flexy supercapacitor breaks records
It doesn't sound like a huge number, but 6.3 milliwatt-hours per cubic mm is a breakthrough: it's the highest volumetric energy density so far achieved in a microscale carbon-based supercapacitor. Such devices are keenly sought in electronics research to drive the growing wearables market, since battery life is a big issue …
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Monday 12th May 2014 06:11 GMT Suricou Raven
The clothing is a bad idea. As soon as you tear the fabric in any way, it'd catch fire.
It's still good tech, though. Fold it up and stick it in a protective box and you've potentially got a replacement for the common battery. Supercaps are purely electrical devices, not electrochemical, which means they don't gradually lose capacity over a couple of years - plus they'll work from sub-freezing to near-boiling temperatures.
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Monday 12th May 2014 06:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Alas, the trend is against us.
I'm willing to bet that all the designery types are already salivating at the idea of making even thinner devices instead of making one with a battery life that exceeds the attention span of a hamster (I may be hamfisted, but the phones are getting too thin to be held comfortably IMHO).
Here's an idea: the next smartphone that comes out should come out in 2 versions: one with the now "traditional" battery life of a phone call, and another one which tries to be usable for more than 24h.
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Monday 12th May 2014 07:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
6.3 microwatt-hours per cubic mm
For comparison, Wikipedia says Li-Ion batteries have an energy density in the range 250-730 Wh/L which equates to 250-730 microwatt-hours per cubic mm. That is, this new stuff is 40-115 times worse than existing technology.
Look at it another way: a mobile phone battery made out of this stuff which is 5mm x 50mm x 100mm would have a capacity of 0.158Wh, which at 3.7V would be 43mAh (compare typical mobile phone batteries in the 1500mAh+ range)
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Monday 12th May 2014 08:53 GMT Andy The Hat
Re: 6.3 microwatt-hours per cubic mm
"For comparison, Wikipedia says Li-Ion batteries have an energy density in the range 250-730 Wh/L which equates to 250-730 microwatt-hours per cubic mm. That is, this new stuff is 40-115 times worse than existing technology."
There certainly seems something up with their 'comparable with ..." statement. Perhaps "no where near comparable with ..." is more interesting, or "give us a load of funding because we're using the wonder material graphene which can do everything and we may produce a small capacitor in the future if you give us the dosh".
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Monday 12th May 2014 08:14 GMT David Pollard
How big?
6.3 uWh per mm^3 is 6.3 kWh per m^3, if I'm doing the sums right. So for running a car, which to be useful needs something like 25 kWh capacity, this would take up about four cubic metres plus connections and case etc.. It looks as though there is still some way to go, though it might be on target for regenerative braking, power tools and similar applications.
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Tuesday 13th May 2014 21:30 GMT wdmot
Re: How big?
Except that the article quoted the abstract incorrectly. It's 6.3mWh per cubic cm, not cubic mm.
From the abstract:
A full micro-supercapacitor with PVA/H3PO4 gel electrolyte, free from binder, current collector and separator, has a volumetric energy density of ~6.3 mWh cm−3 (a value comparable to that of 4 V–500 µAh thin-film lithium batteries)
So it's more like 63 Wh per cubic meter... not so good for cars. Or phones, for that matter. Typical cell phone batteries run, what, 5-9 Wh?
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Monday 12th May 2014 10:59 GMT kmac499
Sounds like a really good start point for hybrid-hybrid vehicles Generator->Batteries->Supercaps
The generator handles the range anxiety, the battery handles the base load and the supercap handles the regenerative braking and the pullaway oomph..
Also sounds like a good idea to marry up with a domestic solar PV installation
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