event
Thursday 13 Mar 2014: Supercapattery: An energy storage prospect from nanotechnology
Professor George Zheng Chen - Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, and Energy and Sustainability Research Division, Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham
HAR/170 (3D Visualisation Suite) 14:00-15:00
It is now widely recognised in both industry and academia that energy storage is one of the key technologies to enable safe, secured, and sustainable supply of energy in the post-fossil era. Up till now, many options for storage of various forms of energy (e.g. heat and compressed air) have been proposed or demonstrated, but "direct" electricity storage is perhaps the most important for at least two interdependent reasons. Firstly, many renewable harvesting technologies output electricity as the commercial product. Secondly, there should be as few as possible conversion steps in the storage and release processes to minimise energy loss. This presentation will focus on a newly proposed and demonstrated electricity storage device, supercapattery, that combines the performance characteristics of rechargeable batteries (high energy capacity, low power capability) and supercapacitors (high power capability, low energy capacity, also known as ultra-capacitor or electrochemical capacitor). In particular, the performance of supercapattery (cf. the Ragone plot on the right) is correlated to the nanostructured electrode materials (hybrid materials of carbon nanotubes with electronically conducting polymer or transition metal oxides), and device designs developed by the author's research team in the past decade (cf. Refs.1-20). Examples are provided to demonstrate the principle, practice and prospect of this new device.
References
[1] G.Z. Chen, M. Shaffer, D. Coleby, G. Dixon, W.Z. Zhou, A.H. Windle, D.J. Fray, Adv. Mater. 12 (2000) 522.
[2] M. Hughes, M.S.P. Shaffer, C. Singh, G.Z. Chen, D.J. Fray, A.H. Windle, Adv. Mater., 14 (2002) 382.
[3] C. Peng, G.A. Snook, D.J. Fray, M.S.P. Shaffer, G.Z. Chen, Chem. Commun. (2006) 4629.
[4] X.B. Jin, W.Z. Zhou, S.W. Zhang, G.Z. Chen, Small, 3 (2007) 1513.
[5] C. Peng, J. Jin, G.Z. Chen, Electrochim. Acta, 53 (2007) 525.
[6] C. Peng, S.W. Zhang, X.H. Zhou, G.Z. Chen, Energy Environ. Sci., 3 (2010) 1499.
[7] D. Hu, C. Peng, G.Z. Chen, ACS Nano, 4 (2010) 4274.
[8] C. Peng, D. Hu, G.Z. Chen, Chem. Commun., 47 (2011) 4105.
[9] X.H. Zhou, C. Peng, G.Z. Chen, AIChE J, 58 (2012) 974.
[10] (Review) G.Z. Chen, Prog. Nat. Sci.-Mater. Int., 23 (2013) 245.
Acknowledgement: The author thanks the E.ON International Research Initiative (2007) and the EPSRC (2002) for financial support, and all past and present co-workers, whose names appear in the list of references, for valuable contributions. Responsibility for the content of this publication lies with the author.
