NSF Award
9901725
This Small Business Innnovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will develop high-capacitance electrodes that combine high surface area with the electric double-layer effect and fast, reversible faradaic processes at the electrode. This will be accomplished by infiltrating high surface area carbons with Ru02, via a unique process developed at Ultramet and successfully demonstrated in the Phase I project. The net result will be an electrode combining the high surface area of the carbon substrate with the pseudocapacitance properties of Ru02. The primary drawbacks of current electrochemical double-layer capacitor (EDLCs) devices are cost and power density. The EDLC electrode material that allows for the greatest specific capacitance is ruthenium oxide (Ru02), which is derived from ruthenium, an expensive platinum group metal. The cost of such capacitors is therefore quite high. Furthermore, because electrode surface area is a key parameter for capacitance, and because current technology only allows dispersal of the oxide electrode material to surface areas of -120 m2/g, the bulk of the oxide mass remains unused.<br/><br/>The optimization of high surface area, high-capacitance electrodes will have many applications in both the civilian and military sectors. Civilian applications include electric automobiles portable communications equipment, pulse power supplies for high-power lasers, burst power for high-power signal generation, and power conditioning for satellites. Military applications include space power conditioning, laser weaponry, electronic fuzes, safety and arming devices, and missile guidance systems.
