If there is something that surrounds us and what we cannot escape, that is plastic. Better or worseplastic is used for everything and we have abused so much that even Our semen is full of plastic. However, not all are the same and there is a very special one that was discovered in the 80s: the Poli (3.4-ethylendioxytiophen), or pedot, for abbreviation. We are talking about a special plastic because, although with limitations, it is a conductor of electricity.
However, UCLA researchers have found The way to create a pedest supercadrator, and is something with potential to change energy storage and transmission of it.
Pedot. Plastic is common in elements that need an electricity insulator. A simple example is that of loaders or plugs, whose coverage is a polymer. However, in the 80s a combination was discovered that allowed to create a conductor polymer of electricity. And he did it in normal environments, so the air and humidity did not take its toll.
That is why it is used in many types of devices, such as OLED panelstactile screens, electrocromic elements, sensors, flexible conductive films or flexible solar panelseven experiments such as 2.0 brick with energy storage or a Electrical cultivation floor.
Almost for everything. Pedot’s problem is that it transmits electricity well, but it is not good by storing it because it does not have the necessary surface to store large amounts of energy. Therefore, the bricks we talked about before gave to illuminate a LED (which requires an extremely low amount of electricity), not for much more. But of course, if the plastic was already revolutionized with the pedot, one could go one step further, right?
Superpedot. That is what a chemical team from the University of California was asked, who sought to control the growth of the nanofibers of this polymer so that, in addition to conducting electricity, it can be stored. In something that UCLA chemists have baptized as “steam stage”, pedot’s nanofibers expand vertically.
To get a more visual idea, it is as if it were a mantle of grass, which allows the surface of the material to be increased and, therefore, providing the polymer with better properties to store energy. And this growth has been achieved by adding a liquid formed by graphene oxide nanoparticles and ferric chloride on a graphite sheet. Once it is exposed to steam, that vertical polymer is formed.
Plastic battery. By increasing the surface of the pedot, “we increase its ability enough to build a supercainer,” Comment Haher El-Kady, principal researcher of this project. It’s an achievement, it is clear, but … for what? Well, the idea is to create more efficient storage systems to address the problem of storage of renewable energy plants. It is something that, for example, is disrupting giant plans like China.
Applications. And the great point in favor of this superpedot is that it can release energy accumulating electric charge on its surface. It is what allows you to load and download extremely fast, which makes it an ideal system for applications that require quickly released and storing it again, again, faster than a conventional battery.
An example can be the flash of a camera, but also something much more practical for the energy transition of the automotive segment: regenerative braking systems in electric vehicles. A conventional battery stores and releases energy by slow chemical reactions, but this pedotal supercadrator can use that regenerative braking, for continuing with that example, to store a greater load of energy that, then, feed the wheels.
Promising. The team states that its conductivity is 100 times greater than that of other commercial products based on Pedot, but also has a four -time surface, which facilitates that use as a supercainer. They also comment that it is very durable, supporting more than 70,000 load cycles, which makes them more interesting than traditional materials with greater wear in that constant load and discharge process.
From the UCLA, they are convinced that “the use of pedot with graphene in supercaursors can help society meet their energy needs,” but we must continue investigating to check their properties in field work. And, yes, these supercaders are not a replacement of batteries, but a complement to applications that require a high loading and discharge speed.
The battery remains the best commercial way to store that energy and the field of electric cars It is one in which superconductors can give a lot of play. One of the most interesting examples of use is the one that MIT engineers detailed a few years ago: convert roads into supercaders.
Images | UCLA
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