Electronic Capacitors From Seaweed

New materials for advanced electronics are commonly expensive, high-tech substances. But a team of scientists in France has shown that energy-storage components called supercapacitors can be made from a remarkably cheap and humble material: baked seaweed.

Francois Beguin of the CNRS Research Centre on Divided Matter in Orleans, France, and his co-workers say that seaweed, when burned to a charcoal-like form, is just the right stuff for making the electrodes in state-of-the-art supercapacitors. It performs as well as the carbon-based substances currently used in commercial devices, the scientists say.

"People working on carbons are always looking for improved properties," says Mildred Dresselhaus, a specialist in carbon materials at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She points out that coconut shells are already used as a source of porous carbon for water filtration and other applications. "Low-tech routes are commonly used when they do the job," Dresselhaus says.




Posted by: Erica    Source