From Zn-Supercapacitors to Zn-Ion Batteries to Zn-Air Batteries
A ladder with three steps of increasing complexity. But we are tackling those three step in parallel.
SupercapBatteries. Hybrid Supercapacitors made of hybrid electrodes for hybrid energy storage.
We work on batteries (great energy, poor power), we work on supercapacitors (great power, poor energy). Now we also work on hybridizing them to get extra energy density while keeping high power.
NEW REVIEW: Hybrid Energy Storage. The merging of battery and supercapacitor chemistries. D.P. Dubal, O. Ayyad, V. Ruiz, and P. Gomez-Romero* Chemical Society Reviews, 2015, 44, 1777. DOI: 10.1039/C4CS00266K
Nanofluids are HOT
Heat Transfer Fluids (HTFs) have shown they are great at transferring heat at low temperatures. We want to understand why and we want them working at high temperatures for boosting thermal solar energy.
From Nanofluids to nanopastes for large-scale energy storage.
The idea is storing fluids (or pastes) with high energy density in large tanks externally to the electrochemical reactor that we have always called battery. This type of liquid storage is bound to obliterate the word “intermittent“ out of renewable energies and even end up fueling our not-so-far-ahead future electric cars. Our novel materials provide fast charge-discharge processes and looong durability. Much longer than Li.
New industrial methods for the preparation of high-quality graphene in large amounts
We are not into making the finest square centimeter of graphene. Neither we are into making the oxidized stuff (although we know how to prepare it). We make large amounts of high-quality graphene (no oxygen) through our own fabrication method.
Micro-Supercapacitors with Silicon NanoWires
A collaborative European project (NEST; Nanowire Energy Storage) integrating knowledge, integrating Europe.
NEW. European Patent: “Electrode material comprising silicon nanowires covered by a Mesoporous oxide nanostructured coating and salt-doped ionic liquid electrolytes for energy storage device”. Pedro Gómez-Romero, Deepak P. Dubal, David Aradilla, Gerard Bidan (CSIC, CEA). Solicitud de Patente Europea 15158311, 9-03-2015