I-Corps: Supercapacitors for Energy Applications

I-Corps：能源应用超级电容器

• 批准号: 1756904
• 负责人: Zhaoyang Fan
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: Texas Tech University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-10-15 至 2019-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1756904&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Supercapacitors; Energy; Applications

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is in the area of high quality capacitor solution to replace the bulky and lossy aluminum electrolyte capacitors (AECs), a ubiquitous circuit element used in power systems and electronics for current ripple filtering, decoupling, and pulse charging/discharging, among other purposes. Rising demand for high quality capacitors is driven by automotive, telecom, medical and commercial electronics, and by the rapid growth of process automation and internet of things (IoT) in the industrial sectors. The widely used AECs have a low volumetric capacitance density and high parasitic resistance. Their bulky size and high resistive loss limits the system size and performance. Therefore, developing new technologies of quality capacitors will have the opportunities to greatly improve the system performance. These systems and applications span from inverters and DC power suppliers for industry machines, electronic appliances and medical devices, mini and low-profile circuit boards, to efficient storage of the pulse energy harvested from the environmental mechanical vibration, motion, and noise, as well as high-frequency high-power pulse generators.This I-Corps project will explore the market potential of high-frequency AC supercapacitor technology for current ripple filtering in AC/DC conversion and for pulse energy storage in environmental energy harvesting. These supercapacitors based on the principle of electric double layer capacitance and therefore provide a very large capacitance density. However, unlike conventional double layer capacitors that can only be charged-discharged below a frequency of 1 Hz, the devices developed here run at hundreds to kilo-hertz high frequencies and therefore suitable for ripple current filtering and pulse energy storage and generation. The high-frequency characteristic of the device is achieved via nano-engineered carbon fiber and graphene electrodes with suitable pore sizes. This I-Corps project will evaluate the market opportunity of the AC supercapacitor technology through customer discovery interviews. The feedback from these activities will provide better understanding on the customer needs and commercialization requirements, and therefore drive the technology development.

该 I-Corps 项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力在于高质量电容器解决方案领域，以取代笨重且有损耗的铝电解电容器 (AEC)，这是电力系统和电子设备中普遍存在的电路元件，用于电流纹波滤波、去耦，以及脉冲充电/放电等用途。汽车、电信、医疗和商业电子产品以及工业领域过程自动化和物联网 (IoT) 的快速发展推动了对高质量电容器的需求不断增长。广泛使用的 AEC 具有低体积电容密度和高寄生电阻。它们庞大的尺寸和高电阻损耗限制了系统尺寸和性能。因此，开发优质电容器新技术将有机会大幅提高系统性能。这些系统和应用涵盖工业机器、电子电器和医疗设备的逆变器和直流电源、微型和薄型电路板，以及从环境机械振动、运动和噪声中收集的脉冲能量的高效存储作为高频大功率脉冲发生器。该 I-Corps 项目将探索高频交流超级电容器技术的市场潜力，用于交流/直流转换中的电流纹波滤波以及环境能量收集中的脉冲能量存储。这些超级电容器基于双电层电容原理，因此提供非常大的电容密度。然而，与只能在低于 1 Hz 的频率下充放电的传统双层电容器不同，这里开发的器件可以在数百至千赫兹的高频下运行，因此适用于纹波电流过滤以及脉冲能量存储和生成。该设备的高频特性是通过具有合适孔径的纳米工程碳纤维和石墨烯电极实现的。该 I-Corps 项目将通过客户发现访谈来评估交流超级电容器技术的市场机会。这些活动的反馈将有助于更好地了解客户需求和商业化要求，从而推动技术发展。