Super capacitor is a new type of energy storage device between physical capacitor and secondary battery, and it has the characteristics of high power density of physical capacitor and high energy density of secondary battery. Besides that, super capacitor also has high efficiency, long cycle life and other excellent properties. Super capacitors will be widely used in electric vehicles, information communications, aerospace and military industries.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the leader in the electric car industry, believes that lithium will soon become obsolete and that super capacitors will become the main energy equipment for cars in the future. Super capacitors are not only used to meet the high power requirements of starting, accelerating, and climbing cars. With the increase of electric capacity, their advantages will exceed that of lithium, what's more, the car won't have to wait too long to charge, perhaps in a few minutes.
At present, the most advanced countries with super capacitor technology are the United States, Japan and Russia. The super capacitor is mainly composed of fluid, electrode, electrolyte and diaphragm, among which electrode material is the key factor affecting the performance and production cost of the super capacitor, and the development of high performance and low cost electrode materials is the main content of super capacitor research.
On July 18, 2017, researchers at the University of Washington developed a system to make super-capacitor electrodes, which are faster and cheaper than traditional methods, and the key to this technology is to combine nano tungsten disulfide with carbon electrode.
It is understood that the team used aerogels to obtain high surface area of high efficiency electrodes. The aerogels scheme is the most promising electrode manufacturing scheme in the field of super capacitors. The main material of aerogels is always carbon, which has the characteristics of good conductivity, large specific surface area and wide range of density variation. It is an ideal electrode material for the preparation of double-layer capacitors. However, the defects of carbon aerogels are expensive raw materials, complex preparation technology, long production cycle and difficult large-scale production, which can only be found in the laboratory.
The researchers tried adding graphene to the carbon gel electrode, but unfortunately graphene didn't work, so they switched to tungsten disulfide, which was surprisingly good. The researchers treated tungsten disulfide with high-frequency sound waves, breaking it down into thin sheets and incorporating it into a carbon-rich gel matrix. Tungsten disulfide can make a full load of wet gel in less than two hours, while other materials take many days. The researchers also found that carbon-gas gels made of tungsten disulfide remained stable enough to catalyze hydrogen production, not only without affecting the structure of the gels, but also showing good cycling stability, which indicates that the electrode will have a very long service life.
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The researchers believe their work has greatly advanced the development of super capacitors, paving the way for large-scale production of super capacitors, which can be popularized with only minor adjustments in the days ahead.