I-Corps: Supercapacitors for Energy Applications

Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is in the area of high quality capacitor solution to replace the bulky and lossy aluminum electrolyte capacitors (AECs), a ubiquitous circuit element used in power systems and electronics for current ripple filtering, decoupling, and pulse charging/discharging, among other purposes. Rising demand for high quality capacitors is driven by automotive, telecom, medical and commercial electronics, and by the rapid growth of process automation and internet of things (IoT) in the industrial sectors. The widely used AECs have a low volumetric capacitance density and high parasitic resistance. Their bulky size and high resistive loss limits the system size and performance. Therefore, developing new technologies of quality capacitors will have the opportunities to greatly improve the system performance. These systems and applications span from inverters and DC power suppliers for industry machines, electronic appliances and medical devices, mini and low-profile circuit boards, to efficient storage of the pulse energy harvested from the environmental mechanical vibration, motion, and noise, as well as high-frequency high-power pulse generators. This I-Corps project will explore the market potential of high-frequency AC supercapacitor technology for current ripple filtering in AC/DC conversion and for pulse energy storage in environmental energy harvesting. These supercapacitors based on the principle of electric double layer capacitance and therefore provide a very large capacitance density. However, unlike conventional double layer capacitors that can only be charged-discharged below a frequency of 1 Hz, the devices developed here run at hundreds to kilo-hertz high frequencies and therefore suitable for ripple current filtering and pulse energy storage and generation. The high-frequency characteristic of the device is achieved via nano-engineered carbon fiber and graphene electrodes with suitable pore sizes. This I-Corps project will evaluate the market opportunity of the AC supercapacitor technology through customer discovery interviews. The feedback from these activities will provide better understanding on the customer needs and commercialization requirements, and therefore drive the technology development.