You may soon be able to charge your smartphone within seconds, thanks to a novel technology developed by researchers that can significantly improve energy-storage devices known as supercapacitors. However, applications have been limited so far by their relatively low storage capacity, researchers said. The liquid salt serves as a spacer to separate the thin graphene sheets, preventing them from stacking like pieces of paper. The liquid salt does double duty as the electrolyte needed to actually store electrical charge, minimising the size and weight of the supercapacitor. The detergent also functions like chemical Velcro to make the droplets stick to the graphene, researchers said.

Source: dna October 25, 2017 10:34 UTC