Supercapacitor designed that stretches eight times

A scientific group of scientists from the American Institute of Michigan State University managed to create an elastic supercapacitor that can be stretched up to 800% while remaining completely workable.

The created capacitor is also resistant to subsequent compression and stretching, and after 10,000 charge-discharge cycles, its maximum capacity is reduced by only 10%.

What are you - supercapacitor

In essence, supercapacitors occupy an intermediate position between conventional capacitors and batteries.

Since they charge much faster (in comparison with traditional batteries) and have a significantly higher capacity (in comparison with conventional capacitors).

That is why such "supers" are actively used in electronics, where a huge amount of energy is required at a certain point in time.

It is to such devices that, for example, camera flashes can be ranked.

How the elastic supercapacitor was created

So, flexible supercapacitors are excellent contenders for powering flexible electronics. Initially, engineers created such a supercapacitor from straight carbon nanotubes (CNTs), while they managed to achieve a capacity of 100 F g ^ -1. Moreover, it could well be stretched by 30% of its original length.

But as practice has shown, products that are assembled from the so-called "crumpled" CNTs show themselves much more effectively. At the same time, the capacity of a new product is twice as high, and it can be stretched 8 times from its original state.

But a supercapacitor made of twisted CNTs has one significant drawback, which is that in the stretched state, its resistance greatly increases.

The engineers proposed to neutralize this disadvantage by covering the CNT with an additional layer of gold.

After additional processing with gold, the problem of increased resistance was solved successfully, and it was also possible to achieve even greater capacity and charge-discharge rate.

Production secret revealed

In fact, all ingenious is simple. So in this case: the workpiece is placed on a pre-stretched elastomeric base, then a layer of gold is placed and the substrate is allowed to shrink to its original state.

The gold layer at this moment performs a protective function and does not allow the nanotubes to crack.

Next, the created electrodes are filled with helium electrolyte and placed on top of each other. That's it, the supercapacitor is ready. Now such a product may well power, for example, a wristwatch for 90 minutes.

Of course, this is still only a prototype of the product and there is still a very long way of modifications and experiments. But if everything turns out to be successful, then excellent prospects open up in the creation of full-fledged elastic devices.

Scientists published the research results in the journal Matter.

The original article is located on the site energofiksik.com

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