Supercapacitor Modulate Prototype – Published Manuscript

A recently published manuscript by researchers at RISE ACREO AB, Sweden and Mid Sweden University has explored a new manufacturing procedure of energy storage devices. The publication presents printed electrochemical modules which avoid the cumbersome circuits, connections and soldering points which increase the complexity, chance of disconnections and the cost of traditional module storage devices. Within the publication, charge collectors, interconnections and components for charge balancing were printed showing the potential for fast throughput and volume production.

Lead author, Dr Negar Sani had this to say about the publication.

‘Energy and energy storage is one of the biggest challenges of today’s society and thus is the core of many research projects worldwide. Supercapacitors, particularly for their distinctive performance in high power applications, have attracted a lot of attention in this field. 

Among the main challenges in this field is the fabrication process complexity and consequently the cost. Supercapacitors usually consist of several supercapacitor units that are connected in series to obtain a certain output voltage. The supercapacitor units have slightly different properties that potentially cause some of them to over-charge or over-discharge and be damaged. A key component in this supercapacitor is the balancing circuit which balances the connection between the units to avoid this kind of damage. 

As the knowledge and technology in the supercapacitor field advances, cheaper manufacturing materials are becoming available. Therefore, the cost share of the integration of the supercapacitor units and the balancing circuit is becoming larger compared to the materials cost. The aim of this work has been to suggest a novel, simple and low-cost manufacturing method for supercapacitors. our approach is inspired by the development that started in the early 1960’s when monolithically integrated electronic circuits (IC’s) were introduced. We have used a simple passive balancing circuit implemented as shunt resistors connected to each supercapacitor unit. Monolithically integrated supercapacitors are successfully manufactured by printing electrodes, collectors, interconnects and the balancing shunt resistors on one and the same substrate. With this, we show that monolithic integration is a realistic manufacturing scheme for electrochemical energy storage modules, and a potential path towards lower integration costs for electrochemical energy storage systems.’

Conceptualized.tech helped out making renders seen within the figures of the manuscript which was published in the Journal of Energy Storage.  The article can be found by following the link below.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352152X17304899