Micro-Supercapacitors set for future use “Just think how often
your fancy new mobile phone or computer has become little more
than a paperweight because the battery lost its zeal for doing
its job,” says John Chmiola, a chemist with the Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). “At a time when
cellphones can do more than computers could do at the beginning
of the Clinton presidency, it would be an understatement to say
that batteries have not been holding up their end of the mobile
device bargain.” Chmiola is a staff scientist in the Advanced
Energy Technologies Department of Berkeley Lab’s Environmental
Energy Technologies Division. His research is aimed at
addressing this problem of relatively short-lived portable
energy storage devices. Chmiola believes he has found a solution
in electrochemical capacitors, which are commonly referred to as
“supercapacitors” because of their higher energy storage
densities than conventional dielectric capacitors and higher
abuse tolerance than batteries. In a p