Supercapacitors turbocharged by laxatives

An international team of scientists, including a professor of chemistry from the University of Bristol, has worked out a way to improve energy storage devices called supercapacitors, by designing a new class of detergents chemically related to laxatives. Their paper, published today , explains why these detergents, called ionic liquids, are better electrolytes than current materials and can improve supercapacitors. Currently, aqueous and organic electrolytes are used, but more recently, researchers and manufacturers have been testing ionic liquids instead to boost performance. Although ionic liquids are salts, at room temperature they are surprisingly not crystalline solids - as their name suggests they are in fact liquids. This gives ionic liquids numerous advantages over conventional electrolytes because they are stable, non-flammable, and often much more environmentally friendly. To explore the exciting potential offered by ionic liquids for emerging electrochemical technologies the authors designed a new set of highly efficient detergent-like ionic liquid electrolytes and explained how they work at electrode surfaces. Understanding how they operate will help design even more efficient devices for storing electrical energy.