"Battery problem" is not a problem, "hybrid supercapacitor"

Ioxus Inc. has announced a major improvement in battery structure that will help reduce the gap between semiconductors and battery technology. Traditional battery technology has lagged behind semiconductors because it must rely on unchangeable chemical reactions.

Instead of using main battery energy storage, they only feed a small amount of power to these devices, depending on the needs of individual devices. This new hybrid capacitor/battery stores enough energy for the current energy usage of neighboring devices. Ioxus Inc. said that the company has solved the "battery problem" by defining a new distributed-energy architecture.

“In many applications, our hybrid ultra-capacitors are superior to traditional battery structures,” said Chad Hall, co-founder and vice president of Ioxus. "When you need a small amount of power or backup power, we can provide a solution that meets these needs without any problems with traditional batteries."

The field of application of this technology covers applications from simple to very complex. For example, a simple flashlight can use a hybrid supercapacitor to charge up to 2 hours of power in just 20 seconds. A complex regenerative braking system can also be used instead of a hybrid supercapacitor to charge each time the brakes and stops, and then you can restart the car when you step on the throttle - which is expected to eliminate All the pollution caused by the stoppage and start of the car.

In automotive applications, this hybrid capacitor can be embedded in various different applications in the car in a more cost-effective manner. It can store a smaller amount of energy and provide power for the car. LED lights, onboard computers, power windows , electric door locks and safety systems provide the necessary power. When the car's main battery completely fails, all systems powered by hybrid supercapacitors can still operate smoothly. In addition, Ioxus also estimated that if the electric vehicle uses this distributed hybrid supercapacitor to replace the design of a single large centralized battery, it will be able to reduce the weight of about 20 to 30 pounds (about 9 to 14KG).

There are also a few other manufacturers on the market claiming hybrid ultracapacitors similar to Ioxus, but these products lack the unique integration features of Ioxus. For example, Evans Capacitor Co. has introduced a low-voltage hybrid capacitor with a higher voltage, but it is more similar to a stand-alone type supercapacitor than the hybrid supercapacitor of Ioxus. JM Energy Corp. also developed a "Lithium Ion Capacitor," but similarly, it is more like a lithium-ion battery than the Ioxus hybrid supercapacitor. Ioxus also emphasized that the company’s intellectual property rights make its products more effective than Evan and JM Energy’s products.

How does a "hybrid supercapacitor" work?

How does a "hybrid supercapacitor" work?

Ioxus hybrid supercapacitors combine a capacitor architecture that accumulates charge on separate insulating plates, as well as chemically stored lithium-ion batteries. This hybrid ultracapacitor, which uses the same chemicals as lithium subcells, disperses these chemicals onto the surface of solid electrodes instead of embedding these chemicals into the porous electrodes - this slow "intercalation" process It is necessary for charging and discharging.

Therefore, Ioxus' hybrid ultracapacitors can be charged and discharged at almost any rate, which allows them to deplete and release large or small currents as required by the application. There is only one drawback: they can't store as much power as traditional batteries, and they can't be stored for long, but distributed architectures can compensate for these deficiencies, Ioxus said.

Ioxus hybrid supercapacitors with built-in lithium-ion batteries use a distributed storage architecture and their operational performance is even better than the technology itself

"Hybrid capacitors can be used to add where energy is needed," Hall said. "They can store more energy than a single supercapacitor, and it can withstand almost unlimited number of charge and discharge cycles compared to lithium-ion batteries."

Hybrid ultracapacitors cannot store as much power as lithium-ion batteries, but they can store about twice as much electricity as a single type of ultracapacitor, plus almost unlimited number of charge/discharge cycles. Most lithium-ion batteries have only a few hundred charge/discharge cycles, while some emphasize long-acting versions, and their number of charge/discharge cycles is limited to thousands of times. However, the number of charge/discharge times of hybrid ultracapacitors is usually several times that of their products. Ioxus tests show that the charge/discharge of their products can exceed 20,000 times.

Hybrid ultra-capacitors also offer higher instantaneous start-up power than the most powerful batteries available today - up to 5kW per kilogram, and other higher-priced batteries may only reach 3kW/kg. Ioxus also claims that its hybrid ultracapacitors have an energy efficiency of 95%, while the best lithium-ion batteries have only 70%.