Zinc Microcapacitors Are the Best of Both Worlds

(spectrum.ieee.org)

64 points | by Brajeshwar 3 days ago ago

6 comments

  • myself248 8 hours ago ago

    Sounds like a good match for sensor nodes where energy harvesting may be slow and consumption is intermittent. You don't need massive energy capacity, but you need good power density to support transmit bursts, and you need very high cycle durability.

    • scld an hour ago ago

      Yeah, as long as self-discharge/leakage rates are acceptable, there are a lot of use cases for this middle ground tech.

  • westurner 3 hours ago ago

    Why Zinc if Carbon is sufficient?

    From "Eco-friendly artificial muscle fibers can produce and store energy" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42942421 :

    > "Giant nanomechanical energy storage capacity in twisted single-walled carbon nanotube ropes" (2024) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-024-01645-x :

    >> 583 Wh/kg

    That's with mechanical twisting though; graphene supercapacitors in general have lower energy density than (micro-) capacitors?

  • dvh 10 hours ago ago

    What's wrong with C0G?