SUPERCAPACITORS!

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Batteries are great, they help us store energy for future use, to power our home appliances and our electric vehicles but, they are getting old.
Capacitors seems like the way to go for the future, "SUPERCAPACITORS" to be exact.

Batteries store energy in form of chemicals. Essentially, they break down those chemicals to release the energy and then join then back together to recharge their energy, this makes them very slow when being charged. They also have a very short life span since they get degraded by the continues charging and discharging process.

Capacitors on the other hand store energy in form of static electricity and are more durable, they pack more power, are charge instantly and are very easy and cheap to make, as simple as bringing two metal plates close to each other putting an insulator in between and connecting them.



These are a lot of advantages when compared with batteries but they have one down side, they don't hold much energy. This is the reasons why batteries still dominate. When compared to batteries, their energy density was 10 Wh/kg (watt_hour per kilogram), that is 5% of batteries.

There have been ways or tricks people try to use to overcome this huddle like increasing the surface area of the plates and reducing the distance between them but, none of these really  boosts their energy density when compared with batteries, not until recently.

Researchers studied "soft contact lenses" which were made of a polymer mesh that could swell and store water. By adding different elements to the polymer, it produced different properties like e.g. store electricity.
The researchers tested the polymer and it store a 100× more than they had predicted. After 14 months of careful research, they found it could store 180 Wh/kg, almost on par with the energy density of batteries according to weight.


As the research continues, and the improvement in supercapacitors continues, batteries could be out by the next decade!

In a way, one could say that soft contacts helped us "see a brighter future"!

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