European grant to enable the development of supercapacitors based on nitrogen-doped graphene

Researchers from CATRIN at Palacký University Olomouc, in cooperation with colleagues from Bar-Ilan University in Israel and the Italian company ITELCOND, are working to develop high-capacity, safe, and environmental friendly supercapacitors based on a graphene-derived material developed in Olomouc, which is already protected by a European patent.

The work needed in order to translate this discovery into practice is made possible thanks to a grant funded by the European Innovation Council (EIC) Transition Challenges with an allocated budget of nearly 2.5 million Euros.

The nitrogen-doped graphene we have developed is proving to be very promising for use in supercapacitors. The material has a higher density than graphite, which, combined with the great ability to adsorb ions from the electrolyte, leads to very high volumetric energy density, i.e., the amount of energy stored per unit of volume of the material. This is significantly higher than for all carbon- or graphene-based supercapacitor materials described so far, which can bring a breakthrough improvement in the performance of supercapacitors, said the team leader Michal Otyepka, who is also the principal investigator of two prestigious grants funded by the European Research Council (ERC) addressing the development and possible application of new 2D materials.

The new material from CATRIN can be prepared from graphite fluoride, an industrial lubricant available on the market in tonnes, which increases its potential commercial availability. At the same time, we were very careful to make the resulting component as environmentally friendly as possible, which we achieved by, in addition to using the carbon material itself, selecting the right electrolyte in the supercapacitor, added another member of the research team, Veronika Šedajová, who is also a co-author of the recently granted European patent.

The next step will be to build prototypes of supercapacitors in cooperation with international partners. We will focus on optimizing the properties of our material and move to pilot production of new types of supercapacitors. The aim is to increase the energy density of supercapacitors beyond 50 Wh/L, which will allow their wide use in electric vehicles and as battery supports in devices that need to be supplied with large amounts of energy in a very short time, added Otyepka.