Graphene Supercapacitors

UCLA chemist Ric Kaner introduces graphene — a single layer of carbon, the lightest and strongest material ever discovered — and explains how his lab makes it by coating plastic with graphite oxide and reducing it with the laser of a consumer LightScribe DVD drive. He demonstrates flexible graphene supercapacitors built this way, which charge and discharge far faster than batteries while approaching their energy density, and describes applications from charging a phone in under a minute to flexible electronics and, eventually, electric vehicles. In audience Q&A he covers safety compared with lithium-ion batteries, supercapacitor-powered buses already running in China, and his hope of seeing the technology in consumer products within a couple of years.

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