Resident EE's: What Say You about This?

The only info I could gather as far as energy density was that a 4ft by 4ft sheet will get you up to 3 farad at 7v. It seems it is basically an unrolled capacitor. I don't see it getting the energy density necessary to function as a battery replacement. As a capacitor it will also discharge ambient too quickly to function as a battery.

I'm only an amateurphysicist though. I'll ask my wife when I get home.
 
It's an interesting product but not a game-changer for any normal consumer electronics item. Their sample product is:

Ultrathin - 0.4 mm
Chosen footprint up to 120 x 120 mm
~4.5 Volts and ultralow ESR
Capacitance from 150 - 3000 milliFarads

So with 4"x4" sheet you might get a few milliamps out of it for 10 minutes or so if my mental math was correct. Not sure I understand why they have pictures of the device behind a laptop display or a car hood -- the power provided is completely negligible compared to a Lithium-Ion battery.
 
dukeblue219 said:
It's an interesting product but not a game-changer for any normal consumer electronics item. Their sample product is:

Ultrathin - 0.4 mm
Chosen footprint up to 120 x 120 mm
~4.5 Volts and ultralow ESR
Capacitance from 150 - 3000 milliFarads

So with 4"x4" sheet you might get a few milliamps out of it for 10 minutes or so if my mental math was correct. Not sure I understand why they have pictures of the device behind a laptop display or a car hood -- the power provided is completely negligible compared to a Lithium-Ion battery.
Click to expand...

I don't quite understand that myself. My impression from reading other articles is that their technology may help to extend the lives of standard batteries. But I'm not an EE.

I'll see if I can find the other articles. This is a local company that I'm passively interested in investing in.

-Rich
 
Someone built a power screwdriver with this technology a few years ago... IIRC it was marketed under the coleman brand. What made it special was if it died you could recharge it in a couple of seconds and keep working.

I don't know what happened to them, I do know they are no longer being made/sold. This might be a viable thing, but maybe they are going to need another decade to perfect it.
 
cowman said:
Someone built a power screwdriver with this technology a few years ago... IIRC it was marketed under the coleman brand. What made it special was if it died you could recharge it in a couple of seconds and keep working.

I don't know what happened to them, I do know they are no longer being made/sold. This might be a viable thing, but maybe they are going to need another decade to perfect it.
Click to expand...

Well, supercapacitors have been around for some time now. Fundamentally they operate just they same as any other capacitor -- low energy density but extremely high charge and discharge rates. For example, the following is a 3F 5V supercapacitor for ~$2: http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail...GAEpiMZZMsCu9HefNWqpuFWAWC1QBl146%2bVuoN4Ss0=

What this company appears to be doing is, rather than rolling it up into a traditional "can" shape (which would be *perfect* for a power screwdriver) they just make an ultra-thin flat sheet of the stuff. The $2 cap I linked above is an 8mmx20mm can which does the same thing as these guys' 120mmx120mm sheet.

I'm sure there are certain applications in ultra-thin devices, but it's really not a tech that can be used to power anything that lights up or moves for more than a few seconds or minutes. Perhaps you could use it as the power source for an e-reader or something... dunno.
 
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