It seems like people are wearing and carrying more electronic technology all the time. Up to this point people have used batteries to power them, but there are other options for personal electronics.
Supercapacitors would be a great way to power a gadget, and they can take a charge very quickly. Apparently, they can be made with polyphenols from green tea as well.
In a new report from The American Chemical Society‘s The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, a new supercapacitor technology has been created, and they used green tea to do it.
Guruswamy Kumaraswamy, Kothandam Krishnamoorthy and their team have created a supercapacitor by prepareing polymer gels in green tea extract. The goal was to infuse the gel with polyphenols, and it worked. The polyphenols converted a silver nitrate solution into a uniform coating of silver nanoparticles.
Layers of conducting gold and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) were added, and the product was a supercapacitor that demonstrated power and energy densities of 2,715 watts per kilogram and 22 watt-hours per kilogram.
This is more than enough to power LED’s or a Bluetooth module, among other practical applications. The team then tested the new device’s durability and were happy to see that it was able to function after being compressed in excess of 100 times.
While this technology is in its infancy, it is great to see such encouraging results.
[via eurekalert]
