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Asymmetric electrochemical capacitors—Stretching the limits of aqueous electrolytes

  • Electrochemical Energy Storage to Power the 21st Century
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Abstract

Ongoing technological advances in such disparate areas as consumer electronics, transportation, and energy generation and distribution are often hindered by the capabilities of current energy storage/conversion systems, thereby driving the search for high-performance power sources that are also economically viable, safe to operate, and have limited environmental impact. Electrochemical capacitors (ECs) are a class of energy-storage devices that fill the gap between the high specific energy of batteries and the high specific power of conventional electrostatic capacitors. The most widely available commercial EC, based on a symmetric configuration of two high-surface-area carbon electrodes and a nonaqueous electrolyte, delivers specific energies of up to ∼6 Whkg–1 with sub-second response times. Specific energy can be enhanced by moving to asymmetric configurations and selecting electrode materials (e.g., transition metal oxides) that store charge via rapid and reversible faradaic reactions. Asymmetric EC designs also circumvent the main limitation of aqueous electrolytes by extending their operating voltage window beyond the thermodynamic 1.2 V limit to operating voltages approaching ∼2 V, resulting in high-performance ECs that will satisfy the challenging power and energy demands of emerging technologies and in a more economically and environmentally friendly form than conventional symmetric ECs and batteries.

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Notes

  1. * The symmetric EC design uses two electrodes with the same active materials in the positive and negative electrodes. The asymmetric EC design is related in the present article to the use of two electrodes made of different materials, in which the charge-storage mechanism can be either capacitive, pseudocapacitive, or faradaic.

  2. † “Mild” refers to a near-neutral (5 ≤ pH ≤ 9) aqueous-based solution.

  3. § Packaging can be a polymer or metal casing with different shapes (cylindrical, prismatic). Material and design are chosen according to the solvent used for the electrolyte and the expected volume/weight of the final cell.

  4. ** Thermal runaway describes the situation where overheating a cell results in a further increase in temperature. This uncontrolled increase in temperature can have dramatic consequences, such as melting or vaporization of cell components and cell rupture.

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Acknowledgements

J. Long and M. Sassin acknowledge the financial support of the U.S. Office of Naval Research. D. Bélanger acknowledges the financial support of the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The Ministère Français des Affaires Etrangères of France and the Ministère des Relations Internationales of Québec are also greatly acknowledged for supporting this work. Part of the work contributed by O. Crosnier and T. Brousse was performed under the framework of the ABHYS French ANR project, whose support is also acknowledged. The authors gratefully acknowledge John R. Miller (JME, Inc.) for helpful discussions regarding the technical content of this article.

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  1. U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, 20375, USA

    Jeffrey W. Long & Megan B. Sassin

  2. Département de Chimie, Université du Québec à Montréal, H3C 3P8, Canada

    Daniel Bélanger

  3. University of Nantes, France

    Thierry Brousse & Olivier Crosnier

  4. Shinshu University, Ueda, Nagano, 386-8567, Japan

    Wataru Sugimoto

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Long, J.W., Bélanger, D., Brousse, T. et al. Asymmetric electrochemical capacitors—Stretching the limits of aqueous electrolytes. MRS Bulletin 36, 513–522 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2011.137

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