One of the biggest issues in the field of renewable energy is coming up with better energy storage methods. The goal is to have systems with what’s called ‘high energy density’, so it holds a lot of energy, but can be discharged and charged quickly. To this end, staff scientist Marcus Worsley of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory says their team has joined forces with researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz to create the first 3D-printed supercapacitor using an ultra-lightweight graphene aerogel.
"That’s one of the big efforts here is to make some of these holy grail sort of devices. And the expertise that we have here in materials synthesis, as well as 3D printing, and additive manufacturing, we’d like to kind of join those things together, which is why we have this collaboration going on between engineering and physical and life science to really try to take on some of these very big challenges that face us today."
The graphene-based inks used in their 3D printed supercapacitors opens the door to a whole host of novel designs of highly efficient energy storage systems.