Graphene-made supercapacitors charge in seconds

A scientist in Egypt has developed a way to make supercapacitors and batteries that use graphene to recharge in seconds and last a long time. The scientist conducted his research at UCLA.

Graphene is a new type of material with a two-dimensional network structure composed of carbon atoms. It has the characteristics of flexibility, high density, and extremely fast electron movement.

Maher· Gaudí is a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, and teaching and researcher at Cairo University in Egypt. He said that while researching practical ways to extract graphene, he discovered many excellent properties of graphene, thanks to these properties, supercapacitors made of graphene can store twice as much electricity as existing supercapacitors.

Supercapacitors are mainly used to store the electricity generated by solar panels, and China and the Netherlands have already used supercapacitors in practical applications.

Gaudí emphasized that the supercapacitor made of graphene has the characteristic that the charging process only takes 1 second, and this is still under the premise that the charging process has a response time of 30 milliseconds. In fact, the current charging process of supercapacitors takes about 90 seconds. At the same time, this capacitor is very small, only 7 to 8 microns thick, while the diameter of a human hair is 50 microns.

The Egyptian scientist said that graphene could be used to create batteries for smartphones, tablets, and laptops. The battery has an average charge time of 30 seconds, and this short 30-second charge time can keep laptops working for days and smartphones and tablets for weeks.

He also pointed out that graphene batteries are flexible and foldable; in addition, it is a non-toxic material and environmentally friendly.

Gaudí said that his research results will appear in commercial products in just a few years, and he has selected a company called Maxwell Technology for commercial production.

This innovation by Gaudi is a major shift in the battery and supercapacitor industry. Compared with the computer and electronics industries, the battery and supercapacitor industries have not developed significantly, but the latter plays a huge role in the former. Therefore, Gaudi said that graphene-based batteries and capacitors will greatly promote the development of the above industries.