San Diego, CA, Nov. 19, 2009 -- Most
people would like to be able to charge their cell phones and other
personal electronics quickly and not too often. A recent discovery made
by UC San Diego engineers could lead to carbon nanotube-based
supercapacitors that could do just this. In recent research, published
in Applied Physics Letters, Prabhakar Bandaru, a professor in
the UCSD Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, along with
graduate student Mark Hoefer, have found that artificially introduced
defects in nanotubes can aid the development of supercapacitors.
“While batteries have large storage capacity, they take a long time
to charge; while electrostatic capacitors can charge quickly but
typically have limited capacity. However,
supercapacitors/electrochemical capacitors incorporate the advantages
of both,” Bandaru said.
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been generally hailed as one of the wonder materials of the 21st century and have been widely recognized as ushering in the nanotechnology revolution...
Full article: http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/
