New 'supercondensers' store electric charge in textile materials
Researchers of the Alcoi campus of Valencia's Polytechnic University (UPV) have developed new devices that store electric charge in textile materials, which could be used to, for example, charge our mobile phone. They are supercondensers placed on active carbon tissues that stand out due to their electric properties and high level of power. Their work has been published in the European Polymer Journal.
The study was focused on using textile materials as electrodes. In this case, the devices they have designed and tested make use of all the potential of active carbon, graphene and polyaniline, a polymer with high capabilities that is already broadly used in textile materials.
From their laboratories in the Alcoi campus, they evaluated different strategies that obtain electric charge accumulators from the electrochemical reduction of graphene oxide on the surface of the activated carbon (reduced graphene oxide—RGO) and the subsequent electrosynthesis of polyaniline (Pani).
"We have obtained new electric charge accumulators with specific power that are very competitive, and which could be used to charge the batteries of several devices. The supercondensers have been developed on textile materials, and therefore, the volume/mass and surface/mass ratios are very high. Hence their great potential. And as textile materials, these supercondensers could be small to supply energy to mobile devices, from our mobile phone, to a tablet or laptop, to name a few examples," says Francisco J. Cases, head of the GESEP.
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