Characterization of anodized titanium-based novel paradigm supercapacitors: impact of salt identity and frequency on dielectric values, power, and energy densities

Abstract

This research was designed to characterize the frequency response of Novel Paradigm (NP) Supercapacitors employing Nanotube Super Dielectric Materials as dielectrics. The result of tests with nine capacitors, each with a unique aqueous salt solution, provided detailed information required to design short pulse systems. This detailed information is required for engineering analysis of NP Supercapacitors in systems of interest to the U.S. Navy (USN) such as the railgun, electromagnetic aircraft launch system, and free electron laser. Key findings show salt identity and concentration impact performance, very high energy densities (>150 J/cm3) are found for slow discharges (~100 s), and power density increases as discharge rate increases. Finally, the best power density measured at a discharge rate relevant to USN application (~0.01 s) was 90 W/cm3 using an aqueous salt identity of 30 wt% Ammonium Chloride. This is a significant improvement (>3x) relative to available commercial supercapacitors.