Being able to see what’s going on inside these devices will help us to control their properties, which could help to make them smaller and cheaper.
- John Griffin
Researchers from the University of Cambridge, together with French collaborators based in Toulouse, have developed a new method to see inside battery-like devices known as supercapacitors at the atomic level. The new method could be used in order to optimise and improve the devices for real-world applications, including electric cars, where they can be used alongside batteries to enhance a vehicle’s performance.
By using a combination of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and tiny scales sensitive enough to detect changes in mass of a millionth of a gram, the researchers were able to visualise how ions move around in a supercapacitor. They found that while charging, different processes are at work in the two identical pieces of carbon ‘sponge’ which function as the electrodes in these devices, in contrast to earlier computer simulations. The results have just been published in the journal Nature Materials.
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Image: Supercapacitors store charge by adsorbing ions on a porous carbon surface
Credit: John Griffin
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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