Tag Archives: SpaceX

Soft contact lenses key to supercapacitor breaththrough

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It seems like pretty exciting news for anyone following the supercapacitor story but they are being awfully cagey about it all in a Dec. 6, 2016 news item on Nanowerk,

Ground-breaking research from the University of Surrey and Augmented Optics Ltd., in collaboration with the University of Bristol, has developed potentially transformational technology which could revolutionise the capabilities of appliances that have previously relied on battery power to work.

This development by Augmented Optics Ltd., could translate into very high energy density super-capacitors making it possible to recharge your mobile phone, laptop or other mobile devices in just a few seconds.

The technology could have a seismic impact across a number of industries, including transport, aerospace, energy generation, and household applications such as mobile phones, flat screen electronic devices, and biosensors. It could also revolutionise electric cars, allowing the possibility for them to recharge as quickly as it takes for a regular non-electric car to refuel with petrol – a process that currently takes approximately 6-8 hours to recharge. Imagine, instead of an electric car being limited to a drive from London to Brighton, the new technology could allow the electric car to travel from London to Edinburgh without the need to recharge, but when it did recharge for this operation to take just a few minutes to perform.

I imagine the reason for the caginess has to do with the efforts to commercialize the technology. In any event, here’s a little more from a Dec. 5, 2016 University of Surrey press release by Ashley Lovell,

Supercapacitor buses are already being used in China, but they have a very limited range whereas this technology could allow them to travel a lot further between recharges. Instead of recharging every 2-3 stops this technology could mean they only need to recharge every 20-30 stops and that will only take a few seconds.

Elon Musk, of Tesla and SpaceX, has previously stated his belief that supercapacitors are likely to be the technology for future electric air transportation. We believe that the present scientific advance could make that vision a reality.

The technology was adapted from the principles used to make soft contact lenses, which Dr Donald Highgate (of Augmented Optics, and an alumnus of the University of Surrey) developed following his postgraduate studies at Surrey 40 years ago. Supercapacitors, an alternative power source to batteries, store energy using electrodes and electrolytes and both charge and deliver energy quickly, unlike conventional batteries which do so in a much slower, more sustained way. Supercapacitors have the ability to charge and discharge rapidly over very large numbers of cycles. However, because of their poor energy density per kilogramme (approximately just one twentieth of existing battery technology), they have, until now, been unable to compete with conventional battery energy storage in many applications.

Dr Brendan Howlin of the University of Surrey, explained: “There is a global search for new energy storage technology and this new ultra capacity supercapacitor has the potential to open the door to unimaginably exciting developments.”

The ground-breaking research programme was conducted by researchers at the University of Surrey’s Department of Chemistry where the project was initiated by Dr Donald Highgate of Augmented Optics Ltd. The research team was co-led by the Principal Investigators Dr Ian Hamerton and Dr Brendan Howlin. Dr Hamerton continues to collaborate on the project in his new post at the University of Bristol, where the electrochemical testing to trial the research findings was carried out by fellow University of Bristol academic – David Fermin, Professor of Electrochemistry in the School of Chemistry.

Dr Ian Hamerton, Reader in Polymers and Composite Materials from the Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Bristol said: “While this research has potentially opened the route to very high density supercapacitors, these *polymers have many other possible uses in which tough, flexible conducting materials are desirable, including bioelectronics, sensors, wearable electronics, and advanced optics. We believe that this is an extremely exciting and potentially game changing development.”

*the materials are based on large organic molecules composed of many repeated sub-units and bonded together to form a 3-dimensional network.

Jim Heathcote, Chief Executive of both Augmented Optics Ltd and Supercapacitor Materials Ltd, said: “It is a privilege to work with the teams from the University of Surrey and the University of Bristol. The test results from the new polymers suggest that extremely high energy density supercapacitors could be constructed in the very new future. We are now actively seeking commercial partners [emphasis mine] in order to supply our polymers and offer assistance to build these ultra high energy density storage devices.”

I was not able to find a website for Augmented Optics but there is one for SuperCapacitor Materials here.

Mimicking the sea urchin’s mouth and teeth for space exploration

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Researchers at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) have designed a new device for use in space exploration that is based on the structure and mechanics of a sea urchin’s mouth and teeth. From a May 2, 2016 news item on ScienceDaily,

The sea urchin’s intricate mouth and teeth are the model for a claw-like device developed by a team of engineers and marine biologists at the University of California, San Diego to sample sediments on other planets, such as Mars. The researchers detail their work in a recent issue of the Journal of Visualized Experiments.

A May 2, 2016 UCSD press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, expands on the theme by hearkening back to Aristotle (a Greek philosopher),

The urchin’s mouthpiece was first described in detail by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, earning it the nickname “Aristotle’s lantern.” It is comprised of an intricate framework of muscles and five curved teeth with triangle-shaped tips that can scrape, cut, chew and bore holes into the toughest rocks—a colony of sea urchins can destroy an entire kelp forest by churning through rock and uprooting seaweed.  The teeth are arranged in a dome-like formation that opens outwards and closes inwards in a smooth motion, similar to a claw in an arcade prize-grabbing machine.

The news release goes on to describe the methodology,

Bio-inspiration for the study came from pink sea urchins (Strongylocentrotus fragilis), which live off the West Coast of North America, at depths ranging from 100 to 1000 meters in the Pacific Ocean. The urchins were collected for scientific research by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Researchers extracted the urchins’ mouthpieces, scanned them with microCT, essentially a 3D microscopy technique, and analyzed the structures at the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research at the School of Medicine at UC San Diego. This allowed engineers to build a highly accurate model of the mouthpiece’s geometry.

Researchers also used finite element analysis to investigate the structure of the teeth, a method that allowed them to determine the importance of the keel to the teeth’s performance.

Engineers then turned the microCT data into a user-friendly file that a team of undergraduate engineering students at UC San Diego used to start iterating prototypes of the claw-like device, under the supervision of Ph.D. students in McKittrick’s lab.

The first iteration was very close to the mouthpiece’s natural structure, but didn’t do a very good job at grasping sand.  In the second iteration, students flattened the pointed end of the teeth so the device would scoop up sand better. But the device wasn’t opening quite right. Finally, on the third iteration, they connected the teeth differently to the rest of the device, which allowed it to open much easier. The students were able to quickly modify each prototype by using 3D printers in the UC San Diego Design Studio.

The device was then attached to a remote-controlled small rover. The researchers first tested the claw on beach sand, where it performed well. They then used the claw on sand that simulates Martian soil in density and humidity (or lack thereof). The device was able to scoop up sand efficiently. Researchers envision a fleet of mini rovers equipped with the claw that could be deployed to collect samples and bring them back to a main rover. Frank hopes that this design will be of interest to NASA [US National Aeronautics and Space Administraton] and SpaceX [a private enterprise for designing, manufacturing, and launching craft bound for space].

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

A Protocol for Bioinspired Design: A Ground Sampler Based on Sea Urchin Jaws by Michael B. Frank, Steven E. Naleway, Taylor S. Wirth, Jae-Young Jung, Charlene L. Cheung, Faviola B. Loera, Sandra Medina, Kirk N. Sato, Jennifer R. A. Taylor, Joanna McKittrick. Journal of Visualized Experiments, 2016; (110) DOI: 10.3791/53554 Date Published: 4/24/2016

This paper and its video are behind a paywall. For those unfamiliar with the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JOVE), it is focused largely on videos which demonstrate the various techniques and protocols being described in the accompanying papers.

The researchers have made an introductory video available courtesy of UCSD,