Ultracapacitors employ carbon nanotubes to pump up battery life

Filed in archive Energy on April 18, 2006

Ultracapacitors "have the potential to provide an energy storage device ten times more powerful than even the latest batteries in hybrid cars," says MIT's Technology Review.

A new line of these super-batteries is in development at MIT, where researchers are using carbon nanotubes to increase the surface area of the batteries' energy storage material by "more than an order of magnitude," according to Joel Schindall, professor of electrical engineering at MIT and one of the researchers on the project.

While a one square centimeter conductive plate covered in the carbon used in conventional ultracapacitors has a surface area of about 2,000 square centimeters, the carbon nanotube coating boasts about 50,000 square centimeters.

The extremely high surface area of the nanotubes, the researchers discovered, greatly enhances the batteries' life span and ability to store energy. As a result, hybrid cars could run more efficiently, and laptops and cell phones could be charged in seconds. (photo MIT)