Twisted commercially available carbon nanotubes store more energy than lithium-ion batteries

Old news, but good news! Could this be a breakthrough in battery technology?

"By making single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) into ropes and twisting them like the string on an overworked yo-yo, ... showed that they can store twice as much energy per unit mass as the best commercial lithium-ion batteries. The nanotube ropes are also stable at a wide range of temperatures, and the team say they could be safer than batteries for powering devices such as medical sensors. ..."

From the abstract:

"A sustainable society requires high-energy storage devices characterized by lightness, compactness, a long life and superior safety, surpassing current battery and supercapacitor technologies. Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), which typically exhibit great toughness, have emerged as promising candidates for innovative energy storage solutions. Here we produced SWCNT ropes wrapped in thermoplastic polyurethane elastomers, and demonstrated experimentally that a twisted rope composed of these SWCNTs possesses the remarkable ability to reversibly store nanomechanical energy. Notably, the gravimetric energy density of these twisted ropes reaches up to 2.1 MJ kg−1, exceeding the energy storage capacity of mechanical steel springs by over four orders of magnitude and surpassing advanced lithium-ion batteries by a factor of three. In contrast to chemical and electrochemical energy carriers, the nanomechanical energy stored in a twisted SWCNT rope is safe even in hostile environments. This energy does not deplete over time and is accessible at temperatures ranging from −60 to +100 °C."

Twisted carbon nanotubes store more energy than lithium-ion batteries – Physics World

UMBC scientists show twisted carbon nanotubes might power “wind-up” sensors and other devices (original news release)

Giant nanomechanical energy storage capacity in twisted single-walled carbon nanotube ropes (open access)

Fig. 1: Performance of a twisted SWCNT rope and other viable energy carriers.

Scanning electron microscope images show some carbon nanotube "ropes" subjected to different twist strains.

One of the scientists involved Preety Ahuja. (Translation: preety = pretty?, Google search result: "The name Preeti is derived from the Sanskrit word "प्रीति" (prīti), meaning "pleasure", "joy", "kindness", "favor", "grace", "love", from प्री (prī).")