Scientists accidentally create something fabulous: discovery will have a major impact on electric car and laptop batteries – Source News

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bATTERY for electric vehicles could last much longer thanks to a new capacitor with 19 times higher energy density created by mistake by scientists, writes livescience.com.

Electric car batteries and Notebook it could charge much faster and last longer thanks to a new structure that can be used to make much better capacitors in the future.

A new material structure could revolutionize energy storage, allowing capacitors in vehicles or electrical devices to store energy for much longer, scientists say.

Researchers have developed new “heterostructure” capacitors with a new property that reduces the rate at which energy is dissipated without affecting their ability to charge quickly.

An accidental discovery

The new discovery – which the scientists say was unintentional and is based on new work in electronics – could lead to better battery life in consumer devices such as laptops or smartphones. as well as greater flexibility in grid-scale energy storage. The researchers described their findings in a study published April 18 in the journal Science.

While batteries can store energy for a long time, charging and discharging electricity takes a long time. This is where capacitors come in – they store electricity in an electric field that can be quickly charged and discharged for quick access to energy as needed.

Smartphones, for example, generally use battery power, but draw power from capacitors when power is needed in a short burst—such as for a camera flash. Every smartphone it usually has hundreds of capacitors.

Some capacitors use ferroelectric materials to store energy. These materials are naturally polarized, which can be reversed by applying a voltage. When the bias is reversed, it remains in the capacitor as a “memory”, even after the voltage is removed.

The application of energy reverses the polarization of these materials, and they can maintain this polarization even after the energy has been removed. However, they generally retain energy poorly for longer periods of time compared to batteries.

The new structure is in a physical and chemical balance between conductivity and non-conductivity, which allows it to retain energy more efficiently. By chance, the researchers discovered that a small gap in the core increases the relaxation time – a term used to describe the period during which the capacitor loses its charge.

In each of the heterostructures, 2D and 3D materials are layered like sheets of pasta in an atomic-level lasagna, with chemical and non-chemical bonds between each layer. The maximum thickness of its global structure is only 30 nanometers – about 30,000 times thinner than a human hair.

“Something I’ve never seen before”

The researchers said the technology could provide up to 19 times more energy density than current capacitors. The team also reported an efficiency of over 90%, a remarkable result in the field. The comparable efficiency for the new ferroelectric capacitors stands at 86.95 percent, according to research published in July 2023 in the journal Materials.

“We found that the dielectric relaxation time can be modulated or induced by a very small gap in the material structure,” Sang-Hoon Bae, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the University of Washington, said in a statement. “This new physical phenomenon is something we have never seen before. It allows us to manipulate the dielectric material in such a way that it does not polarize and lose charge capacity.”

If replicated on a large scale, the structure could fuel a shift in how we store and access energy, as it would allow energy to be accessed very quickly, on demand, without sacrificing long-term storage stability.

With higher energy densities, next-generation capacitors could enable greater use of fast-charging capacitors for devices that need long-term storage, such as electric vehicles. Capacitors could also provide fast, on-demand power for the grid or for private industrial uses.