
How a Microscopic Supercapacitor Will Supercharge Mobile Electronics - mrfusion
http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/materials/how-a-microscopic-supercapacitor-will-supercharge-mobile-electronics
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astrodust
What's especially remarkable about this process is how they're using an every-
day piece of electronics, a Lightscribe, a DVD burner basically, to do the
production.

They need a laser with precision control and where better to find one than in
a device like that.

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p1mrx
LightScribe was discontinued in 2013, and is no longer available on new
drives. It's fortunate that someone thought to try this experiment during its
brief window of popularity.

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astrodust
Finding these used would not be hard.

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ChuckMcM
I was talking with someone about this the other day, the amount of energy you
can store in graphene capacitors (potentially) is pretty impressive. The trick
is not turning them into bombs at that point.

I expect that we'll see a lot more in this space over the next 6 to 18 months.
Perhaps it was what Elon was eluding too with his range statements.

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mey
This is true of all energy storage. Your laptop lithium-ion batteries are
pretty decent fire starters when shorted correctly (incorrectly?). This is why
there is so much safety circuitry in batteries.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCGtRgBUHX8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCGtRgBUHX8)

Another way to think about it is to compare Energy Density to larger scale
things we have closer experiences with, such as Gasoline

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density)

The difference between a fire and explosion is really how quickly you can
release the energy potential, so capacitors should be rather interesting in
that case.

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ridgeguy
Agree - rate of energy release is everything.

A pound of hamburger releases about 1152 kcal, or about 4.8 megaJoules of
energy when metabolized over a day or so after it's eaten.

One pound of TNT releases about 2 megaJoules of energy in a few microseconds
when it's detonated.

Big difference in the results. One makes me fat. The other makes me dead.

I'd be worried about a super capacitor that contained a week's worth of my
laptop energy, and that might release it in a second.

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pavs
> Big difference in the results. One makes me fat. The other makes me dead.

Well both makes you dead, but at different rate...

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jws
_Together with a battery, such supercapacitors could run a cellphone for
days._

Really? That's novel.

One of the proposed applications is for bursty current applications which
currently have batteries with more capacity than required in order to serve
peek current demands, but I rather doubt cell phones are in that category.

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aexaey
s/peek/peak/

