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Supercapacitors

Porous materials get energized

Nature Materials volume 16, pages 161–162 (2017)Cite this article

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By making use of a semiconducting metal–organic graphene analogue, researchers propose a new generation of supercapacitors with potential as tunable molecular materials for energy.

Supercapacitors power a wide variety of devices, ranging from small, low-power electronics up to the large energy units found in electric vehicles. They can be used either alone or to supplement other power sources, they can be recharged in a matter of seconds, and they are particularly important for applications that require a high-energy peak power supply for a short period of time. Supercapacitors store charge when electrolyte ions form electrical double layers at the surface of oppositely charged electrodes under an externally applied voltage, with the amount of charge stored being proportional to the available electrode surface area1. Optimal energy storage materials should therefore possess a combination of high surface area and electrical conductivity, though to date only activated carbons have provided practically useful combinations of these two features. Where other materials such as zeolites and metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) might show considerably higher surface areas, these insulators cannot facilitate charge transport and storage. Now, writing in Nature Materials, Mircea Dincă and co-workers2 present a Ni3(hexaiminotriphenylene)2 (Ni3(HITP)2) MOF electrode with high porosity and intrinsic electrical conductivity, and test its double-layer charge storage. The energy storage capabilities of this material challenge those of activated carbon based systems3.

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Figure 1: Structure and performance of Ni3(HITP)2 MOFs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alexandru Vlad is at the Institute of Condensed Matter and Nanosciences, Université catholique de Louvain, 1348 Louvain la Neuve, Belgium,

    Alexandru Vlad

  2. Andrea Balducci is at the Institute for Technical Chemistry and Environmental Chemistry — Center for Energy and Environmental Chemistry Jena (CEEC Jena), Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, 07743 Jena, Germany,

    Andrea Balducci

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  1. Alexandru Vlad
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  2. Andrea Balducci
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Correspondence to Alexandru Vlad or Andrea Balducci.

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Vlad, A., Balducci, A. Porous materials get energized. Nature Mater 16, 161–162 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4851

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