Supercapacitors - Supercapacitors: What are They and What Makes Them Super?

Super­ca­pac­i­tors… we hear about them a lot ! Our hybrid vehi­cles race in their suprema­cy. Our wind tur­bines rotate in their smooth­ness. Our portable speak­ers oscil­late in quick jolts of their pow­er. Even our dig­i­tal cam­eras flash in their super charg­ing times. But what exact­ly are super capac­i­tors ? What actu­al­ly makes them super ? How are they dif­fer­ent from ordi­nary capac­i­tors ? This piece will intro­duce you to the basics of super­ca­pac­i­tors explain­ing every fun­da­men­tal aspect of their design and technology. 

What are super capacitors ?

Sim­ply put, super capac­i­tors are capac­i­tors with high capac­i­tance val­ues — much high­er than your nor­mal capac­i­tors ! They have two met­al plates, just like an ordi­nary capac­i­tor ; how­ev­er, the area of these plates is much big­ger while the dis­tance between them is small­er. What makes the area of these plates big­ger ? It’s the design of the plates. Basi­cal­ly, super capac­i­tor plates are coat­ed with a porous sub­stance such as char­coal. This coat­ing helps the plates store more charge on them. How, you ask ? Think of elec­tric­i­ty as water for a moment and an ordi­nary capac­i­tor as a piece of cloth. How much water can you mop up with the cloth if it spills on the floor ? Not much. Now imag­ine instead of cloth, you’ve a chunky sponge. Using the sponge, you’re like­ly to soak up more water — isn’t it ? Well, the coat­ing on your super capac­i­tor plates make them porous and make them act like a chunky sponge. And that’s how they get a big­ger area for stor­ing charge. Besides hav­ing plates with big­ger area and small­er dis­tance, super capac­i­tors also dif­fer from ordi­nary capac­i­tors in that they don’t use a sol­id (or gaseous) dielec­tric medi­um. Then what do they use ? They use an elec­trolyte ; plates of super capac­i­tors are soaked in an elec­trolyte. By vary­ing the com­po­si­tion and qual­i­ty of elec­trolyte, you can vary the ener­gy den­si­ty of super capac­i­tors. Com­bine these three design dif­fer­ences between super­ca­pac­i­tors and ordi­nary capac­i­tors, and you real­ize why the for­mer has much high­er capac­i­tance and ener­gy den­si­ty. These design dif­fer­ences are what make supercapacitors super” and charge-rich. How­ev­er, the ener­gy den­si­ty of cur­rent­ly avail­able super capac­i­tors is still much low­er as com­pared to what lithi­um bat­ter­ies offer. Much research is being put into this area for fur­ther improve­ment and we can expect super capac­i­tors to be com­pet­ing soon with lithi­um bat­ter­ies in terms of ener­gy den­si­ty — they may out­do them as well. Where does we come into all this ? As one of the largest pro­duc­ers and sup­pli­ers of super­ca­pac­i­tor elec­trolytes, Wat­son Inter­na­tion­al offers a grow­ing list of high qual­i­ty elec­trolyte prod­ucts. Our prod­ucts are for­mu­lat­ed to help you design super capac­i­tors with high ener­gy den­si­ties and capac­i­tances. For more details, please call +1 (909)345 0760-31 or con­tact us by fill­ing our online con­tact form.