I-Corps: Supercapacitors for Energy Applications

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是在高质量电容器解决方案领域，以取代笨重且易损耗的铝电解质电容器（aec）， aec是电力系统和电子设备中普遍使用的电路元件，用于电流纹波滤波，去耦和脉冲充电/放电等用途。汽车、电信、医疗和商业电子产品以及工业部门过程自动化和物联网（IoT）的快速增长推动了对高质量电容器的需求不断增长。广泛应用的aec具有体积电容密度低、寄生电阻高的特点。其庞大的尺寸和高电阻损耗限制了系统的尺寸和性能。因此，开发优质电容器的新技术将有机会大大提高系统的性能。这些系统和应用范围从工业机器、电子电器和医疗设备、小型和低调电路板的逆变器和直流电源供应商，到从环境机械振动、运动和噪声中收集的脉冲能量的有效存储，以及高频大功率脉冲发生器。这个I-Corps项目将探索高频交流超级电容器技术在交流/直流转换中的电流纹波滤波和环境能量收集中的脉冲能量存储的市场潜力。这些超级电容器基于电双层电容原理，因此提供了非常大的电容密度。然而，与只能在低于1hz的频率下充放电的传统双层电容器不同，这里开发的设备运行在数百到千赫兹的高频上，因此适合纹波电流滤波和脉冲能量存储和产生。该器件的高频特性是通过纳米工程碳纤维和具有合适孔径的石墨烯电极实现的。这个I-Corps项目将通过客户发现访谈来评估交流超级电容器技术的市场机会。来自这些活动的反馈将提供对客户需求和商业化需求的更好理解，从而推动技术的发展。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is in the area of high quality capacitor solution to replace the bulky and lossy aluminum electrolyte capacitors (AECs), a ubiquitous circuit element used in power systems and electronics for current ripple filtering, decoupling, and pulse charging/discharging, among other purposes. Rising demand for high quality capacitors is driven by automotive, telecom, medical and commercial electronics, and by the rapid growth of process automation and internet of things (IoT) in the industrial sectors. The widely used AECs have a low volumetric capacitance density and high parasitic resistance. Their bulky size and high resistive loss limits the system size and performance. Therefore, developing new technologies of quality capacitors will have the opportunities to greatly improve the system performance. These systems and applications span from inverters and DC power suppliers for industry machines, electronic appliances and medical devices, mini and low-profile circuit boards, to efficient storage of the pulse energy harvested from the environmental mechanical vibration, motion, and noise, as well as high-frequency high-power pulse generators.This I-Corps project will explore the market potential of high-frequency AC supercapacitor technology for current ripple filtering in AC/DC conversion and for pulse energy storage in environmental energy harvesting. These supercapacitors based on the principle of electric double layer capacitance and therefore provide a very large capacitance density. However, unlike conventional double layer capacitors that can only be charged-discharged below a frequency of 1 Hz, the devices developed here run at hundreds to kilo-hertz high frequencies and therefore suitable for ripple current filtering and pulse energy storage and generation. The high-frequency characteristic of the device is achieved via nano-engineered carbon fiber and graphene electrodes with suitable pore sizes. This I-Corps project will evaluate the market opportunity of the AC supercapacitor technology through customer discovery interviews. The feedback from these activities will provide better understanding on the customer needs and commercialization requirements, and therefore drive the technology development.