Print Your Own Supercaps

[Gil] recently wrote in to tell us about some awesome research going on at UCLA. Apparently by layering some oxidized graphite onto a DVD and tossing it into a lightscribe burner, it’s possible to print your own super capacitors; some pretty high capacity ones at that.

For those that are unaware, supercapcaitors are typically made using two electrolyte soaked, activated carbon plates separated by an ion permeable film. Since activated carbon has an incredible surface area huge energy densities can be reached, in some cases 1kJ/lb.

Laser-formed graphite sponge replaces the activated carbon in the researchers’ printed capacitors. A video after the break discusses  the whole process in moderate detail, meanwhile greater detail can be found in their two papers on the subject.

First one to print a transistor gets a bag of mosfets!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oEFwyoWKXo&w=470]

125 thoughts on “Print Your Own Supercaps

  1. Has anyone tried making Graphite Oxide on their own yet and had success?

    It feels like everything went quiet, I figured someone would have been able to repeat the process at home by now.

  2. Graphene is OBVIOUSLY a revolution , considering the fact that “United drone” are able to build drone that can fly 4h to 8h long.
    Graphene will bring you your own flying machine, no doubts about it, cause this is what they want, this is what I want.

  3. I have seen a few demonstrations from various people online using this method, but I do have a question. How many layers of graphene are produced? From my understanding single layer is very transparent. I would be very interested on learning how to remove these layers and possible contaminations.

  4. I wonder if you produce graphene by this method or just reduced graphite oxide? Can you show that you really got graphene? Have you used for example Raman spectroscopy to verify your results?

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