The chemical battle inside instantaneous energy storage devices
Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - 07:01
in Physics & Chemistry
When you're merging onto the Beltway around the nation's capital, you want to go from 20 to 70 mph now. Supercapacitors, often built from a two-dimensional material called graphene, have the potential to provide electric or hybrid cars with the energy needed to safely merge into traffic, but different studies of the devices' performance give almost random performance data. The suspected culprits were tiny flaws on the graphene electrode. But, what, exactly, was happening? A trio of scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) found that two groups of atoms were slipping onto the surface and causing ions to stick, keeping charged particles from doing their job of storing and releasing electricity.