Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering have created a new porous, three-dimensional carbon that can be used as a greatly enhanced supercapacitor, holding promise for energy storage in everything from energy grids and electric cars to consumer electronics.
The findings of the group, led by materials science and mechanical engineering Professor Rodney S. Ruoff, were published May 12 by Science magazine in its online publication ScienceXpress. The significance of the discovery by Ruoff's team, which included postdoctoral fellow Dr. Yanwu Zhu and graduate students Shanthi Murali and Meryl Stoller, is the potential it offers for enabling supercapacitors to deliver significantly more charge, opening the doors to many potential unprecedented uses for this type of electrical energy storage device.