UCLA trumpets supercapacitor for wearables or implants A hybrid supercapacitor out of UCLA has got the uni's boffins excited, since they claim they've achieved high energy density but in a thinner-than-paper package. In a paper published at PNAS (abstract), the researchers claim capacitance of more than 1,100 Farads per cubic centimetre – or around 1,145 Farads per gram, which is …
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Maybe this could be just the thing that microdrones (yes this is actually a real thing) need to take off.
Picture this, a whole army of these things which when the battery gets low seek out a convenient metal immobile object with the correct magnetic properties and "clamp on", extending their shielded solar panels mounted on the rotors to capture sunlight like a leaf.
Upon fully recharging they exchange information to each other like "Hi Drone 455, there is a nice landing point here" and any other useful information then apply current pulse directly to the magnet via resistive contacts to weaken the field enough to detach then resume their SAR/etc mission.
Also an advantage with microdrones is that if they are equipped with a hive mind they can cooperate on tasks such as linking together via magnetic (alternate) clamps and lifting large objects.
Sort of like foglets but on a larger scale.
What are the failure modes?
The more densely you store energy the nastier it is when it escapes, regardless of the technology. But it's even nastier if it escapes fast.
A lithium battery in your pocket can catch fire, and dump its energy in a few minutes.
A supercapacitor in your pocket can go FA-ZAPP!
Some strange response to an inventive idea. The DVD burner video is very interesting for the combination of high-accurate COTS, combined with "kitchen cabinet" chemistry.
It might be that failure modes are caused by the inhomogeneous way in which most deposition chemistries are achieved.
If batteries were made like CPUs, perhaps there would be fewer problems, but they would cost $$$$.
It would appear this sort of addresses the manufacturing consistency part of the process..
My $0.02.
P.
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