Nanotechnology offers new approach to increasing storage ability of dielectric capacitors

Oct. 21, 2015, was the day that Doc Brown and Marty McFly landed in the future in their DeLorean, with time travel made possible by a "flux capacitor."

While the flux capacitor still conjures sci-fi images, capacitors are now key components of portable electronics, computing systems, and electric vehicles.

In contrast to batteries, which offer high storage capacity but slow delivery of energy, capacitors provide fast delivery but poor storage capacity.

A great deal of effort has been devoted to improving this feature—known as energy density—of dielectric capacitors, which comprise an insulating material sandwiched between two conducting metal plates.

Now, a group of researchers at the University of Delaware and the Chinese Academy of Sciences has successfully used nanotechnology to achieve this goal.

The work is reported in a paper, "Dielectric Capacitors with Three-Dimensional Nanoscale Interdigital Electrodes for Energy Storage," published in Science Advances.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-10-nanotechnology-approach-storage-ability-dielectric.html#j