ISCF Wave 1: High Energy Density Capacitors Manufactured with Optoelectronic Tweezers (CapOET)

随着移动电话的普及和可穿戴技术等新兴趋势的出现，对便携式设备存储电能的需求越来越大。从以汽油为燃料的汽车转向电动汽车，以减少碳排放，从而应对气候变化，也产生了对电能存储的更大需求，以至于今天每年售出超过10亿块锂离子电池。锂离子电池通常被使用，因为它们可以存储比竞争技术更多的电能，同时物理上又小又轻。然而，电容器是储存电能的另一种方法，因为它们比电池更大、更重，它们只能在短时间内需要大量能量的应用中使用，因为它们可以快速释放能量。该项目旨在减少电容器的尺寸和重量，同时仍允许它们存储足够的电能，以便它们能够与电池竞争，并利用其快速充电和放电的天然优势以及改进的设备寿命(它们存储能量的能力不会像电池那样随着时间的推移而降低)来创造更好的能量存储设备。我们的工业合作伙伴戴森对这项技术感兴趣，因为他们的小型、便携和自主产品。电容器可以存储的电荷量取决于制造它的材料。材料抵抗施加在其上的电场越多(例如，介电常数越高)，可以存储在器件中的能量就越多。在这个项目中，我们将开发一种材料，它的介电常数比自然产生的材料高得多。为了实现这种材料，我们将使用一种新的技术，将金属纳米颗粒(直径为十亿分之一米的颗粒)组装成长链颗粒，看起来像“珍珠链”，它们之间有绝缘间隙。一旦我们用我们的新技术制造了电容器，我们将测量电容器可以储存多少能量，因此它所用的材料可以抵抗所施加的电场。我们将对器件进行模拟，并将它们与测量结果进行比较，以帮助确定哪种物理描述最能描述新材料中存在的物理。这个项目最终将生产一个技术演示，我们将生产一种使用我们的一个电容器存储能量的设备来运行LED。我们的建议符合工业战略挑战基金(ISCF)的目标1、2和3。我们的项目合作伙伴戴森计划在未来几年投资GB 1B进行能源存储研发，其中大部分将用于投资其他从事能源存储的公司，但我们的项目将使他们获得更好的能力，并增加投资英国研究的能力(ISCF目标1)。我们的项目涉及化学家之间的跨学科研究，工程师和物理学家提出了一种制造高介电常数材料的新方法。这项新的跨学科研究来自于使用一种化学方法来构建纳米级的积木，然后用电气工程技术将这些积木组装成细长的、连续的金属链，其大小使它们能够展示量子力学现象。这种建立能量存储结构的新的跨学科方法符合ISCF的目标2。超级电容器中的能量存储在一个既定的研究领域中进行了大量的活动，旨在增加可以存储在固/液界面的能量。我们的技术是创新的，因为它使用了一种根本不同的方法，即电荷存储在纳米介质中。该项目将允许我们的项目合作伙伴参与研究，这些研究比他们本来能够从事的研究更具创新性和更高的风险(ISCF目标3)。

There is an increasing demand for storing electrical energy for portable devices with the popularity of mobile phones and emerging trends such as wearable technologies. The move from petrol fuelled cars to electric cars to reduce carbon emissions and hence tackle climate change has also produced an increased need for electrical energy storage so that today more than one billion lithium-ion batteries are sold each year. Lithium-ion batteries are usually used because they can store more electrical energy than competing technologies whilst being physically small and light. Capacitors are an alternative method of storing electrical energy however because they are larger and weigh more than batteries they are only used in applications where a lot of energy is needed in a short time as they can discharge their energy quickly. This project aims to reduce the size and weight of capacitors whilst still allowing them to store sufficient electrical energy so that they can compete with batteries and use their natural advantages of quick charging and discharging along with their improved device lifetimes (their ability to store energy does not reduce over time like a battery does) to create better energy storage devices. Our industrial partners Dyson are interested in this technology for their small portable and autonomous products.The amount of charge that a capacitor can store is dependent on the material that it is made out of. The more the material resists the electrical field applied to it (e.g. higher permittivity) the more energy that can be stored in the device. In this project, we will develop a material that has a fantastically higher permittivity than naturally occurring materials. To achieve this material we will use a novel technique for assembling metal nanoparticles (particles that are 1 billionth of a meter across) into long strands of particles that look like "pearl chains" with insulating gaps between them. Once we have made a capacitor with our new technique we will measure how much energy the capacitor can store and hence how much the material it is made out of can resist the electrical fields applied. We will perform simulations of the devices and compare them to the results measured to help determine which physical description best describe the physics present in the new material. This project will culminate in the production of a technology demonstrator where we will produce a device that uses one of our capacitors to store energy to run an LED.Our proposal fits with the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) objectives 1, 2 and 3. Our project partners, Dyson, are planning to invest £1B in energy storage research and development over the next several years, much of which will be spent investing in other companies working on energy storage however our project will give them an improved capability and increased capacity to invest this money in UK based research (ISCF objective 1).Our project involves interdisciplinary research between Chemists, Engineers and Physicists to produce a new way to manufacture high permittivity materials. The new interdisciplinary research comes from using a chemical approach to build nanometre scale building blocks and then assemble these with electrical engineering techniques into long thin interrupted metallic strands whose size allow them to exhibit quantum mechanical phenomena. This new interdisciplinary method of creating these structures for energy storage fits with the ISCF objective 2. Energy storage in supercapacitors in an established field of research with a great deal of activity aimed at increasing the energy that can be stored at the solid/liquid interface. Our technique is innovative in that it uses a fundamentally different approach where the charge is stored in nanodielectrics instead. This project will then allow our project partners to be involved in research which is more innovative and higher risk than they otherwise would be able to undertake (ISCF objective 3).