THE AEROCAPACITOR - AN ELECTROCHEMICAL DOUBLE-LAYER ENERGY-STORAGE DEVICE

We have applied unique types of carbon foams developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to make an ''Aerocapacitor.'' The aerocapacitor is a high power-density, high energy-density, electrochemical double-layer capacitor which uses carbon aerogels as electrodes. These electrodes possess very high surface area per unit volume and are electrically continuous in both the carbon and electrolyte phase on a 10 nm scale. Aerogel surface areas range from 100 to 700 m2/cm3 (as measured by BET analysis), with bulk densities of 0.3-1.0 g/cm3. This morphology permits stored energy to be released rapidly, resulting in high power densities (7.5 kW/kg). Materials parameterization has been performed, and device capacitances of several tens of Farads per gram and per cm3 of aerogel have been achieved.