Lamborghini's Terzo Millennio electric supercar prototype uses supercapacitors in its design
Imagine being able to charge your electric car in minutes rather than hours, or your smartphone in seconds.
That's the enticing prospect being touted by researchers who reckon they've discovered a new material that could boost the performance of a carbon-based supercapacitor - sometimes called an ultracapacitor - a type of energy storage device that can be charged very quickly and offload its power very quickly, too.
Dr Donald Highgate, director of research at Superdielectrics Ltd, says a material he originally developed for soft contact lenses is also surprisingly good at holding an electrostatic field.
Very simply, supercapacitors don't produce electricity through chemical reactions as conventional batteries do, they create these electrostatic fields.
Dr Highgate is working with Bristol and Surrey universities to develop supercapacitors using the new polymer and hopes that they could eventually rival, or even surpass, lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries - so long as they manage to replicate prototype performance on a large scale.
So far, supercapacitors have been good at providing quick bursts of power - to start a car engine, for example, or to give trains a boost when accelerating. They're also well-suited to harvesting energy from vehicles when they brake, making them an important component in electric vehicles.
Imagine being able to charge your electric car in minutes rather than hours, or your smartphone in seconds.
That's the enticing prospect being touted by researchers who reckon they've discovered a new material that could boost the performance of a carbon-based supercapacitor - sometimes called an ultracapacitor - a type of energy storage device that can be charged very quickly and offload its power very quickly, too.
Dr Donald Highgate, director of research at Superdielectrics Ltd, says a material he originally developed for soft contact lenses is also surprisingly good at holding an electrostatic field.
Very simply, supercapacitors don't produce electricity through chemical reactions as conventional batteries do, they create these electrostatic fields.
Dr Highgate is working with Bristol and Surrey universities to develop supercapacitors using the new polymer and hopes that they could eventually rival, or even surpass, lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries - so long as they manage to replicate prototype performance on a large scale.
So far, supercapacitors have been good at providing quick bursts of power - to start a car engine, for example, or to give trains a boost when accelerating. They're also well-suited to harvesting energy from vehicles when they brake, making them an important component in electric vehicles.
