"Supercapacitors: The Next Revolution in Electronics"

Unfortunately for some investors, supercapacitors have been the next revolution in electronics for twenty years, and to date no one has completely unleashed their almost magical potential.*

From The Milken Institute Review, July 8:

Many people do not give enough thought to capacitors. For that matter, most people don’t think about capacitors at all, or even know whether they’re animal, vegetable or mineral. And that’s a shame, because capacitors and, in particular, supercapacitors (just think of them as capacitors on steroids), have an essential role in the quest for net zero global carbon emissions.

Capacitors are devices that store electrical energy, like a familiar electrochemical battery — but without dependence on environmentally problematic materials like lead, lithium, cobalt and nickel. Then, too, they charge and discharge more quickly than batteries and offer vastly more cycles before they wear out. It’s not all wine and roses, though: capacitors have much lower energy density than lithium-ion batteries, so for a given size they hold less energy. And the stored energy dissipates more quickly, so they are best used in applications requiring only short-term storage.

But there are plenty of those. Unless you live in a yurt off the grid you’re surrounded by capacitors, as virtually all electronic devices require them. Standard capacitors are effectively commodities, manufactured by the gazillions and selling for pennies a piece. Supercapacitors, more complicated devices that offer higher energy density and more rapid charge-discharge rates, are still relatively expensive. But prices are dropping as the technology is tweaked and production ramps up.

“Everybody has grand goals for electric vehicles, and there’s a huge requirement for capacitance for that technology alone,” notes Dennis Zogbi, an industry analyst specializing in passive electronic components, i.e., capacitors, resistors, diodes and the like. He sees companies scrambling to hire engineers with capacitor expertise who have spent years overshadowed by sexier semiconductor and microprocessor development. “All these guys who were old and in the way are in demand now. Suddenly those are the guys who can build the voltage.” 

Farads and Picofarads

Time out for a no-tears science lesson. Capacitors harness the same force that makes a balloon cling to the wall after you rub it on your sweater; unlike batteries, which store energy electrochemically, capacitors do it electrostatically. Michael Faraday, the British polymath who pioneered the science of electricity in the early 19th century, is credited with inventing capacitors, and in his honor the charge a capacitor can hold is measured in farads. But Faraday stood on the shoulders of others: German and Dutch inventors first built glass capacitors in the 1740s, which were known as Leyden Jars. Benjamin Franklin demonstrated that a flat piece of glass could substitute for an entire jar; indeed, the first flat capacitor was called the Franklin Square.

All capacitors consist of two metal plates, or conductors, one connected to a power source, the other to ground, with an insulating material, or dialectric, between them. The dialectric can be made of most any non-conducting material — think paper, glass, rubber, plastic, even soap and detergents. The charge in the capacitor builds up when electrons flow to the first plate and are hindered from flowing immediately to the second one by the dialectric. The discharge occurs when the plates can hold no more electrons and are provided an exit path — like when you push the shutter button on your camera and the flash fires.

Ceramic capacitors, which look like colored pills with two wires attached, are the most common, used by the score in everything from radios to microwave ovens. Electrolytic capacitors, which look like small tin cans and are most often used to filter out noise and damp voltage ripples in the current supplied to electronic devices, are almost as ubiquitous.

Supercapacitors were invented by General Electric in 1957, but were really only industrialized in the last 20 years....

....MUCH MORE

*Here's a post from September 2007 when supercapacitors were the next big thing:
EEStor Ultracapacitors-Update

FuturePundit garnered some interesting comments after linking to the AP's EEStor article.
(Quick ethics point: WE have to read everything we post, which explains the trauma suffered by yours truly putting together the Fashion Issue).

...A game changer advance in batteries would revolutionize transportation and make the coming of "Peak Oil" a small problem. The cost of electric power for electrically powered travel is cheap. A low cost technology that makes electric cars feasible will enable nuclear, solar, and wind power to push our vehicles down the road for two or three pennies per mile.....

November of that year:

• Smarter energy storage for solar and wind power (Batteries, Supercapacitors)
• The Charge of the Ultra - Capacitor

By 2009 I was getting a bit bored and by 2012 had become very cynical (plus Kleiner Perkins rubs me the wrong way)

Kleiner's EEStor Lives!
And not just in the hearts of children everywhere.
From Greentech:
The ultracapacitor urban legend rises again....

And many more.