Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Tout Electricity Storage Tech That Could Recharge Devices In Minutes
coondoggie writes "Vanderbilt University researchers say they have come up with a way to store electricity on a silicon-based supercapacitor that would let mobile phones recharge in seconds and let them continue to operate for weeks without recharging. The Vanderbilt team said they used porous silicon -- a material with a controllable and well-defined nanostructure made by electrochemically etching the surface of a silicon wafer. This let them create surfaces with optimal nanostructures for supercapacitor electrodes, but it left them with a major problem: Silicon is generally considered unsuitable for use in supercapacitors because it reacts readily with some of chemicals in the electrolytes that provide the ions that store the electrical charge, the researchers said."
Dupe
Please pull this story - it has already been posted today!
Deal with reality - the world as it is - rather than ideality - the world as you would like it to be.
Duplodocus
Minimizes intervals between duplicate stories to only 6.5 hours.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
My phone can already charge in (~10000) seconds and last for (.25) weeks.
It's only six stories down for heaven's sake! Note: this post is likely a dupe too, in order to keep in character with the site.
It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the story again!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We will never get a free piece of it
Governements will, just not us.
Second Post!
Brawndo! It's got electrolytes.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
'nuff said
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
To find, first thing on the front page - a nice nifty dup. Glad to see nothing has changed. ;)
but maybe I am the only one... I must be plugging my phone wrong
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
Are you talking about electrically charged egyptians ?
So will you be holding a bomb upto your head (weeks of charge ???)
Or is a nother one of those 'theoretical things' as likely as a Mr Fusion unit for your cellphone (probably thats the safer option...)
Dificulty fabricating them successfully ??? assembing them (layers of good ones...) extra redundant layer to allow for defects etc...
How about just a days charge first ( with a smaller 'battery' size)
Low voltage equals high current for 'fast' charging - so will the usual charge sources work any more ? Oversize components which will offset other savings ???
Theory and Consumer goods dont always intersect.
Here's a hint. Any time you see a press release from a company or University PR department, ignore it. It's usually much worse than no information at all.
In this case they MAY have figured out how to lay down a supercapacitor on the back side of a silicon chip. Big whoop. You're talking about a few Farads at a few volts at most. Not a lot of energy storage possible there, certainly not enough to run a cell phone for more than a few seconds.
Clicked to the linked article, clicked from there to the original paper.
Figure 4 clearly shows a peak energy density of about 5 Wh/kg. Existing production super caps are about 5 Wh/kg (see Maxwell or Wiki for many examples), so the "significant" improvements being claimed are not in the data.
Claims in the original article, copied here without examination, include making cell phones last for weeks. Li-ion batteries in cell phones have about 210 Wh/kg, so if your phone lasts you a day now, using this tech would make that 1/2 hour.
Total BS.
I highly recommend people to read an article such as the below from the American Chemical Society (the leading professional organisation for Chemists, Chemical Engineers, etc.):
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/cr020730k
Before they start posting about capacitors.
The great strength of capacitors is also its great weakness. It charges quickly... it discharges quickly. Other than some applications in where rapid energy discharge and recovery is possible, it really doesn't offer the same level of application that conventional batteries and fuel cells offer.
Great :(
The next advancement from a phone that catch on fire from overheating Lithium battery,
is a phone, with super duper silicon caps, that will experience uncontrolled disassembly.
IN.YOUR.POCKET
Cryonics - Keep cool and carry on.