High Speed Carbon Nanosheet Supercapacitors

Using its novel carbon nanosheet technology, Luna Innovations will develop a Supercapacitor with the highest energy densities available in the microsecond to millisecond response times. Nanosheets are vertically aligned graphene sheets that can be grown on a wide variety of substrates without catalyst and have an open, accessible surface area that eliminate the resistance due to pores that cause traditionally manufactured Supercapacitors to have reduced efficiency and speed. Preliminary testing of a nanosheet capacitors has already demonstrated the validity of Luna’s approach. BENEFIT: Current battery technology for energy storage suffers from temporal degradation, inability to effectively deal with transient power fluctuations, and a limited temperature range for effective operation. Luna’s nanosheet Supercapacitor technology could be applied to a variety of energy storage needs including those for regenerative braking in hybrid or electric vehicles, a surge power source for battery-powered systems, as a critical component in uninterruptible power supplies, and as a low-weight, fast-charge energy source in cell phones and other portable electronics.