James Tour of Rice University, with the help of his colleagues, has created an electrochemical capacitor that is not only bendable and capable of charging a smartphone, it is also thinner than paper! The idea of flexible power is a major breakthrough and one that could shape the power source industry for electronic devices of the future.
Made of a thin film of nickel and fluoride, the capacitor stores energy in an electric field and is covered in “nanopores”, which enable ions to swiftly flow through it and act as a power source.
In testing, the the film was folded and recharged thousands of time with little effects on overall performance.
Whatever application this breakthrough power source finds itself in is sure to be a talking point of society in the near future. Tour is very confident in his product and even says it “can be easily scaled up for mass production.”
