Supercapacitors Project

Supercapacitors are energy storage devices that exhibit higher power densities than batteries and higher energy densities than capacitors. They are often used in conjunction with batteries to deliver uninterruptible power in the event of battery failure or during recharge cycles. The promise of supercapacitors lies in their potential to reduce the size—and therefore the cost—of electric vehicle batteries. They have recently been incorporated as the essential components of public transportation vehicles due to their fast recharge rates, allowing buses to quickly charge at terminals, as opposed to the hours of downtime that would be required to fully charge traditional charging stations. As a result, both rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors are expected to play an important role in the future of energy storage, largely because of the increasing amount of renewable energy that is now being generated. It is therefore be desirable to develop novel supercapacitor materials that display the necessary characteristics of high power output and high energy density. This project seeks to control the nano-architecture of supercapacitors for the purpose of building hybrid supercapacitor / battery materials via a bottom-up approach.