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According to a paper its inventors published recently in Nature Communications, the Graz cell's performance exceeds that of a Li-ion battery. It is able, for example, to cope with up to 1m charge and discharge cycles, says Qamar Abbas, a member of the team. A Li-ion equivalent might be expected to manage a couple of thousand cycles.
根據其發明者最近發表在《自然通訊》上的一篇論文，格拉茨電池的性能超過了鋰離子電池。例如，研究小組成員卡馬爾·阿巴斯說，它能夠應付高達100萬次的充放電循環。鋰離子當量的電池可以運行幾千次循環。
Both Skeleton and the Graz group, then, are taking modified supercapacitor architecture and adding some bespoke electrochemistry. By contrast, although the offering from NAWATechnologies does indeed also employ modified supercapacitor plates as its electrodes, it uses tried and trusted Li-ion ingredients for the chemical donkey work.
于是，骨架和格拉茨團隊都采用了改良的超級電容器結構，并添加了一些定制的電化學元素。相比之下，雖然NAWATechnologies公司提供的產品確實也使用了改良的超級電容器板作為電極，但它使用了經過驗證的鋰離子成分來進行化學輔助工作。
Like Skeleton, NAWA already manufactures supercapacitors. The plates for these are created using a process which the firm calls VACNT(vertically aligned carbon nanotubes). This arranges those tubes in an array that resembles, in miniature, the bristles on a brush. Extreme miniature. A square centimetre contains about 100bn of them, all standing to attention. That greatly increases the surface area available to hold an electric charge.
NAWA和骨架一樣，也在生產超級電容器。該公司使用一種叫做VACNT(垂直排列碳納米管)的工藝制造了這些平板，將這些管子像微型刷子的刷毛一樣進行排列。極端的縮影。每平方厘米大約有1000億條管子豎著立正，這大大增加了可容納電荷的表面積。
To adapt VACNT plates to operate also as battery-like electrodes, NAWA's engineers have thinned the nanotube forest to make room for coatings of the chemicals which batteries employ for their reactions, and also for the movement of lithium ions into and out of the spaces between the tubes. This freedom of movement, the company reckons, will boost the arrangement's power density by a factor of ten.
為了使VACNT板也能作為類似電池的電極使用，NAWA的工程師對納米管進行了細化，為電池進行化學反應所使用的化學涂層騰出空間，為鋰離子進出奈米管之間的空間騰出空間。該公司估計，這種自由移動將使這種裝置的功率密度提高10倍。
To start with, the nanotubes of the invention's cathode (the positive electrode in a battery) will be coated with nickel, manganese and cobalt, a mixture already widely used to make such cathodes. Conventional anodes (the negative electrodes) are already carbon based, so using that element in the form of nanotubes is not a big departure. Other, less commercially developed battery chemistries should, though, also work with VACNT electrodes. These include lithium-sulphur and lithium-silicon, both of which have the potential to increase energy densities.
首先，該發明的陰極(電池中的正極)的納米管將被鍍上鎳、錳和鈷，一種已經廣泛用于制造此類陰極的混合體。傳統的陽極(負極)已經是碳基的，所以使用碳納米管形式的元素并沒有太大的差異。盡管如此，其他未被商業化開發的電池化學物質也應該適用于VACNT電極。其中包括鋰-硫和鋰-硅，這兩種物質都有可能增加能量密度。
Silicon is particularly promising, but it swells as it absorbs ions, and that can rupture a battery. The thicket of nanotubes in a VACNT electrode should operate like a cage to keep the silicon in check, says Pascal Boulanger, a physicist who helped found NAWA in 2013. The new electrode material could also be used with solid rather than liquid electrolytes, to make "solid-state" batteries. These are powerful and robust, but are proving tricky to commercialise.
硅的前景極其光明，但它會在吸收離子的過程中膨脹，這可能會損壞電池。2013年協助發現NAWA的物理學家帕斯卡爾·布朗熱稱VACNT電極中錯綜復雜的納米管就像籠子一樣控制著硅。這種新的電極材料也可以用于固體電解質(非液體電解質)以制造“固態”電池。這些技術既強大又穩健，但商業化卻很棘手。
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