By Cat DiStasio
Graphene is a super-strong, ultra-lightweight material that's led to scores of technological innovations in recent years. It consists of bonded carbon atoms formed into sheets that measure just one atom thick. The material's strength...
A potent new material has been created that could make the process of charging electric vehicles faster. Also their driving range will be expanded thanks to this device.Electric cars currently...
A few months ago we heard about a supercapacitor designed by a high school student that could lead to quick charging and longer lasting mobile phones. The Blueshift Helium speaker gives us a taste of that future. It also uses supercapacitors instead of rechargeable batteries to drastically reduce charging times.
Blueshift claims that its Helium speakers can be fully charged in just five minutes and last up to six hours while playing at its maximum volume. That’s a huge improvement over practically any speaker in the market. The supercapacitors will also supposedly last up to 500,000 charges, compared to the hundreds or thousands of cycles for most rechargeable batteries. The Bluetooth speakers also have a bamboo case and one or two 4″ full-range drivers (there are mono and stereo versions).
Pledge at least $350 (USD) on Crowd Supply to get a Blueshift Helium speaker as a reward.
Sometimes I find myself hanging around the charger while everyone else starts trooping out the door because my phone is running low on power and wouldn’t last the night if I unplugged it then and there. But who knew you could charge up your phone in just 30 seconds with the right device?
Eighteen-year-old Eesha Khare designed a supercapacitor that has the potential to charge phones in about half a minute. The superconductor is designed to fit inside the battery, which, aside from the rapid charging, also lasts ten times longer than other existing devices. Eesha’s paper, entitled “Design and Synthesis of Hydrogenated TiO2-Polyaniline Nanorods for Flexible High-Performance Supercapacitors”, can be found here.
Khare’s project is based upon the work of Xihong Lu, et. al., with one of the proponents in the study, Dr. Yat Li, supervising her as she used the laboratory equipment of the University of California Santa Cruz.
Khare’s superconductor won her $50,000 at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, which she will be using “to go to college and to keep making a lot of scientific advancements.” It looks like she’s off to a great start!
How fitting is it that a high school student may have found the answer to longer lasting and faster charging mobile devices? The promising invention was made by Eesha Khare, an 18-year old student from Saratoga, California. It’s a supercapacitor that, according to Intel, “fits inside cell phone batteries, allowing them to fully charge within 20-30 seconds.”
Supercapacitors have significantly higher durability and rate of charging (and discharging) compared to rechargeable batteries, but the downside to them is that they have a low energy density. That’s why they’re mainly used in devices that need short bursts of power. But in the video below, which was uploaded by Santa Barbara Arts TV on YouTube, you’ll hear Khare mention that her supercapacitors have “a special nanostructure, which allows for a lot [sic] greater energy per unit volume.”
For her invention, Khare won $50,000 (USD) and was awarded one of the runners-up honors at the 2013 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. The first place went to a 19-year old who developed an AI for a low-cost self-driving car. But Khare bags the top prize in my book. Not that it’s worth anything. My book doesn’t even actually exist.
We see a lot of sleek-lookingtechnology pass through our doors, but it's rare that the inventions could be called beautiful by those who aren't immersed in the gadget world. We'd venture that North Carolina State University might have crossed the divide by creating an energy storage technology that's both practical and genuinely pretty. Its technology vaporizes germanium sulfide and cools it into 20-30 nanometer layers that, as they're combined, turn into nanoflowers: elegant structures that might look like the carnation on a prom dress or tuxedo, but are really energy storage cells with much more capacity than traditional cells occupying the same area. The floral patterns could lead to longer-lived supercapacitors and lithium-ion batteries, and the germanium sulfide is both cheap and clean enough that it could lead to very efficient solar cells that are more environmentally responsible. As always, there's no definite timetable for when (and if) NC State's technology might be commercialized -- so call someone's bluff if they promise you a nanoflower bouquet.
By Cat DiStasio
Graphene is a super-strong, ultra-lightweight material that's led to scores of technological innovations in recent years. It consists of bonded carbon atoms formed into sheets that measure just one atom thick. The material's strength...
