I-Corps: Supercapacitors for Energy Applications

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是在高质量电容器解决方案领域，以取代笨重和损耗的铝电解液电容器(AEC)，AEC是电力系统和电子产品中的一种普遍使用的电路元件，用于电流纹波滤波、解耦和脉冲充电/放电等目的。对高质量电容器的需求上升是由汽车、电信、医疗和商业电子以及工业领域过程自动化和物联网(IoT)的快速增长推动的。目前广泛使用的AEC具有低体电容密度和高寄生电阻的特点。它们体积庞大，阻性损耗大，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极大地提高系统性能。这些系统和应用范围从工业机械、电子设备和医疗设备、微型和薄型电路板的逆变器和直流电源，到高效存储从环境机械振动、运动和噪声中获得的脉冲能量，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AC/DC转换中用于电流纹波过滤和用于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双电层电容的原理，因此提供了非常大的电容密度。然而，与传统的只能在1赫兹以下充放电的双层电容器不同，这里开发的器件运行在数百到数千赫兹的高频，因此适合纹波电流滤波和脉冲储能和发电。该器件的高频特性是通过具有合适孔径的纳米工程碳纤维和石墨烯电极实现的。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。这些活动的反馈将提供对客户需求和商业化要求的更好了解，从而推动技术发展。

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.