Ion

• Behind many of these devices is a type of energy storage device, the supercapacitor.
• My team of engineers is working on making these supercapacitors even better at storing energy by studying how they store energy at the nanoscale.
• They charge faster than batteries, often in a few seconds to a minute, but generally store less energy.
• This research could one day improve the energy storage capabilities of supercapacitors.

All about the pores

• Understanding the flow of ions can help researchers control the rate at which a supercapacitor charges and releases energy.
• But researchers still don’t know exactly how ions flow into and out of porous materials.
• When the surface of the pore is charged, ions flow from the reservoir into the pore or vice versa.
• Now, imagine a pore divides into two different branched pores.

Modifying a law of physics

• Engineers generally use a set of physics laws called “Kirchoff’s laws” to determine the distribution of electrical current across a junction.
• The second law states that voltage, the pressure pushing electrons through the current, can’t abruptly change across a junction.
• We used the modified Kirchoff’s law to simulate and predict how ions flow through a large network of nanopores.

The road ahead