New Supercapacitor Enable Devices to Be Charged in Seconds

Researchers from the University of Central Florida’s NanoScience Technology Center are working on a new Supercapacitor technology that will revolutionize the way devices are charged from gadgets as small as phones to batteries used in electric vehicles. Current battery technology is very limited in that it takes a while to charge and also degrades over several recharges. Nitin Choudry, a postdoctoral associate that is part of the research team says that the technology they are developing will instead only require charging within a few seconds and the user will not have to recharge it again for weeks.

The technology involves development of newly discovered two-dimensional nanomaterials that are only a few atoms thick, showing promising results in supercapacitor application compared to graphene and other two-dimensional materials. The core of this facilitates high-speed electron transfer for rapid discharging and charging.

“There have been problems in the way people incorporate these two-dimensional materials into the existing systems — that’s been a bottleneck in the field. We developed a simple chemical synthesis approach so we can very nicely integrate the existing materials with the two-dimensional materials,” according to Yeonwoong Jung, assistant professor with joint appointments to the NanoScience Technology Center and materials science & engineering department.

A typical lithium-ion battery can be recharged around 1,500 times without significant failure, while in comparison using the supercapacitor technology the team developed, there is no degradation detected even after charging 30,000 times. Due to their construction, it also shows significant promise in enduring wearable tech.  Needless to say, the application of this kind of supercapacitor is endless although it is still far from commercialization, but the team is confident and is already working to patent the new process.