Nanomaterial combines attributes of both batteries and supercapacitors
A powerful new material developed by Northwestern University chemist William Dichtel and his research team could one day speed up the charging process of electric cars and help increase their driving range.
An electric car currently relies on a complex interplay of both batteries and supercapacitors to provide the energy it needs to go places, but that could change.
“Our material combines the best of both worlds — the ability to store large amounts of electrical energy or charge, like a battery, and the ability to charge and discharge rapidly, like a supercapacitor,” said Dichtel, a pioneer in the young research field of covalent organic frameworks (COFs).
Dichtel and his research team have combined a COF — a strong, stiff polymer with an abundance of tiny pores suitable for storing energy — with a very conductive material to create the first modified redox-active COF that closes the gap with other older porous carbon-based electrodes.
“COFs are beautiful structures with a lot of promise, but their conductivity is limited,” Dichtel said. “That’s the problem we are addressing here. By modifying them — by adding the attribute they lack — we can start to use COFs in a practical way.”
And modified COFs are commercially attractive: COFs are made of inexpensive, readily available materials, while carbon-based materials are expensive to process and mass-produce.
Dichtel, the Robert L. Letsinger Professor of Chemistry at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, is presenting his team’s findings today (Aug. 24) at the American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meeting in Philadelphia. Also today, a paper by Dichtel and co-authors from Northwestern and Cornell University was published by the journal ACS Central Science.
To demonstrate the new material’s capabilities, the researchers built a coin-cell battery prototype device capable of powering a light-emitting diode for 30 seconds.
The material has outstanding stability, capable of 10,000 charge/discharge cycles, the researchers report. They also performed extensive additional experiments to understand how the COF and the conducting polymer, called poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) or PEDOT, work together to store electrical energy.
Dichtel and his team made the material on an electrode surface. Two organic molecules self-assembled and condensed into a honeycomb-like grid, one 2-D layer stacked on top of the other. Into the grid’s holes, or pores, the researchers deposited the conducting polymer.
Each pore is only 2.3 nanometers wide, but the COF is full of these useful pores, creating a lot of surface area in a very small space. A small amount of the fluffy COF powder, just enough to fill a shot glass and weighing the same as a dollar bill, has the surface area of an Olympic swimming pool.
The modified COF showed a dramatic improvement in its ability to both store energy and to rapidly charge and discharge the device. The material can store roughly 10 times more electrical energy than the unmodified COF, and it can get the electrical charge in and out of the device 10 to 15 times faster.
“It was pretty amazing to see this performance gain,” Dichtel said. “This research will guide us as we investigate other modified COFs and work to find the best materials for creating new electrical energy storage devices.”
Learn more: New electrical energy storage material shows its power
The Latest on: Electrical energy storage material
[google_news title=”” keyword=”electrical energy storage material” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Electrical energy storage material
- ClearBridge Energy MLP Strategy Q1 2024 Portfolio Manager Commentaryon April 27, 2024 at 8:00 am
The ClearBridge Energy MLP Strategy underperformed its Alerian MLP Index benchmark during the first quarter of 2024. Click here to read the full fund letter.
- Enhancing memory technology: Multiferroic nanodots for low-power magnetic storageon April 26, 2024 at 9:10 am
Traditional memory devices are volatile and the current non-volatile ones rely on either ferromagnetic or ferroelectric materials for data storage. In ferromagnetic devices, data is written or stored ...
- Schneider Electric Launches All-In-One Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) for Microgridson April 25, 2024 at 11:07 pm
Schneider Electric, the global leader in digital transformation of energy management and automation, today announced the launch of its latest ...
- Disrupting Energy Storageon April 25, 2024 at 10:05 am
There’s a great deal of research taking place with battery technologies to find a viable alternative to lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, which will find its way to the power ...
- Researchers increase storage, efficiency and durability of capacitorson April 25, 2024 at 6:36 am
Pacemakers, defibrillators, radar technology and electric vehicles all need electrical components called capacitors that can store and release a lot of energy in a matter of a few microseconds.
- Energy Storage Systems: 100 Times Better Heat Transfer Thanks to the Use of Liquid Metalon April 24, 2024 at 1:03 am
The industrial production of steel, concrete, or glass requires more than 20 percent of Germany’s total energy consumption. Up to now, 90 percent of ...
- MXenes to revolutionize energy storage; may help devices charge in secondson April 23, 2024 at 9:56 am
A team at Texas A&M University is focusing on MXenes, which is expected to be a compelling alternative to conventional lithium-ion batteries.
- This electrode material allows 33x more energy storage in wearableson April 21, 2024 at 5:25 am
Fiber-like electrodes with exceptional strength, lightness, and flexibility, promises improved energy storage in wearable devices.
- Novel material supercharges innovation in electrostatic energy storageon April 18, 2024 at 11:00 am
Electrostatic capacitors play a crucial role in modern electronics. They enable ultrafast charging and discharging, providing energy storage and power for devices ranging from smartphones, laptops and ...
- New material for hydrogen storage confines this clean yet troublesome fuelon April 17, 2024 at 8:41 am
Skoltech scientists and their colleagues from Shubnikov Institute of Crystallography of RAS and research centers in China, Japan, and Italy have discovered a material for chemical storage of hydrogen ...
via Bing News