Engineers have achieved a significant advance in the international effort to create energy storage technologies that combine rapid charging with strong power output, paving the way for next-generation systems in electric transportation, grid support and everyday electronics.
According to findings published in Nature Communications, the researchers have developed a new carbon-based material that enables supercapacitors to hold energy levels comparable to traditional lead-acid batteries while releasing that energy far more quickly than conventional battery designs.
Supercapacitors are a developing category of energy storage devices that rely on electrostatic charge storage instead of the chemical reactions used in batteries. A long-standing challenge has been that only a small share of the carbon surface area needed for energy storage has been usable.
Professor Mainak Majumder, Director of the ARC Research Hub for Advanced Manufacturing with 2D Materials (AM2D) in Monash's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, participated in the study.
"Our team has shown how to unlock much more of that surface area by simply changing the way the material is heat-treated," said Professor Majumder.
"This discovery could allow us to build fast-charging supercapacitors that store enough energy to replace batteries in many applications, and deliver it far more quickly."
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