Supercapacitors are energy storage devices that are very stable and long-lived, with high power density (power per unit of volume) but very low specific energy (energy stored per unit of mass). This means supercapacitors are able to deliver large amounts of power, but only for a few seconds at a time.

A team of researchers led by Prof. Cengiz S. Ozkan at UCR has now developed a new design for a supercapacitor with a specific energy of 39.3 Wh/kg and power density of 128 kW/kg, which is roughly double the performance of commercial supercapacitors in both these respects.