The next electric car you buy might have a little extra zip. That’s because researchers have developed a new electric storage material that’s among the best at holding large amounts of charge as well as charging and discharging in just seconds, they report this week. Moreover, because the starting materials for making it are commercially available and relatively cheap, it may prove more useful than higher performance—yet more exotic—materials currently under development. That could eventually allow automakers to build faster charging electric cars with a longer driving range than any on the road today.
The new material, called a covalent organic framework (COF), is a highly porous crystal. It’s used to store electricity in the heart of devices called supercapacitors, which are widely used in everything from cars to computers. In their simplest form, supercapacitors consist simply of two metal electrodes separated by a conducting liquid, or electrolyte. To charge the device, you apply a voltage between the two electrodes. That causes oppositely charged ions to snuggle up to the surface of the electrodes, where they remain even after the voltage is turned off. When the supercapacitor is discharging, electrons flow from the negatively charged electrode to the positive one, doing work along the way.
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