Monolithic Carbide-Derived Carbon Films for Micro-Supercapacitors

Microcapacitors for Manufacture Capacitors can store small amounts of charge, and as they can charge and discharge quickly, they work well with batteries for recovering power, such as in regenerative braking in hybrid cars. For very small power requirements, capacitors have not been competitive with microbatteries, but using monolithic carbon films to store the charge, Chmiola et al. (p. 480 ) demonstrate the feasibility of such applications. The small pores in the carbon films are sufficiently large to allow electrolyte transport and can be made using a processing technique compatible with current chip manufacturing. Such microcapacitors can thus be integrated with electronics to make autonomous sensors or implantable devices.