Tired of waiting for your electronic devices to charge? Afraid to transition to an electric car for the same reasons? Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder (United States) may have a solution for you: supercapacitors so efficient that they charge a phone in one minute, and a car in ten more.
Optimize ion movements
If said supercapacitors have not yet been developed, researchers may have opened the way that will allow it. To do this, they looked at the movement of ions in porous environments and figured out how to quickly store and release ions in such environments. However, supercapacitors are precisely devices that store energy thanks to the accumulation of ions in porous electrodes.
The acceleration of the charge and discharge time of supercapacitors lies in the movement of these ions. The more efficient it is, the faster the recharge. Before this study, ion movements were only described in a single straight pore. With this research, the movement of ions in a complex network of thousands of interconnected pores can be simulated and predicted in minutes. These simulations can therefore be used to ultimately develop supercapacitors taking into account the best way to increase the efficiency of ion movement, and therefore storage.