Breakthrough In Use of Graphene For Ultracapacitors

Hugh Pickens writes "Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have achieved a breakthrough in the use of a one-atom thick graphene for storing electrical charge in ultracapacitors. They believe their development shows promise that graphene could eventually double the capacity of existing ultracapacitors. 'Through such a device, electrical charge can be rapidly stored on the graphene sheets, and released from them as well for the delivery of electrical current and, thus, electrical power,' says one of the researchers. Two main methods exist to store electrical energy: in rechargeable batteries and in ultracapacitors, which are becoming increasingly commercialized but are not yet well known to the public. Some advantages of ultracapacitors over traditional energy storage devices such as batteries include: higher power capability, longer life, a wider thermal operating range, lighter, more flexible packaging and lower maintenance. Graphene has a surface area of 2,630 square meters, almost the area of a football field, per gram of material."

Comments

advantages of batteries

[loshwomp]

Some advantages of ultracapacitors over traditional energy storage devices such as batteries include: higher power capability, longer life, a wider thermal operating range, lighter, more flexible packaging and lower maintenance.

By contrast, two advantages of batteries are 1) vastly higher energy density, and 2) the fact that they exist.

Re:advantages of batteries

[OldMiner]

I know you're trying to be cleverly ironic here, but you can buy ultracaps today. The higher power capability, swifter charging, longer life, wider thermal operation range, more flexible packaging, and lower maintenance are already there and have been for years along with the superior environmental characteristics. However, "lighter" isn't true yet, since the energy density of an ultracap is an order of magnitude lower than that for a dry cell. That's why a breakthrough such as in this article is such a big deal.

If grapheme could reliably be utilized to create the sort of energy density posited here, any application requiring large amount of batteries (such as electric cars) would benefit greatly. Unfortunately, since capacitors are more prone than dry cells to losing energy over time due to internal resistance, this won't eliminate the need for dry cells entirely.

Here's the deal

[Colin Smith]

Human resource usage expands to consume all available resource...

That is the history of humanity in one sentence. In fact, it can be generalized to all life.

 

Re:Here's the deal

[srussia]

Human resource usage expands to consume all available resource...

That is the history of humanity in one sentence. In fact, it can be generalized to all life.

Agree with your first statement. The difference, however, between humanity and other forms of life is that humans increase available resources in order to be able to expand usage.

Graphene's properties

[JSchoeck]

Don't worry that the Graphene layer would rip. It's a very, very strong material and the connections between the atoms are strong conjugated double-bonds.
This is the same structure as in Carbon Nano Tubes and Fullerens (C60), just flat (and not cylindrically or spherically rolled up).

The problem to implement Graphene based technologies is rather the synthesis of it, since it's not yet easily possible to create a homogeneous Graphene layer on a large area (i.E. at my Applied Physics institute they create Graphene layers that are not even 1 mmÂ).