EFFECTS OF 3-DIMENSIONAL CURRENT COLLECTORS ON SUPERCAPACITORS CHARACTERISTICS

Supercapacitors made of high-area electrode materials are complementar y to batteries as far as electrical energy storage is concerned. Indee d, supercapacitors show low energy-density but high power-density. To achieve this, the time constant RC must be as low as possible, so the internal resistance R must be low. Apart from the effect of electrolyt e resistivity and electrode thickness on the internal resistance, we s how that the structure of the current collector acts on this parameter ; the use of a three-dimensional current collector, such as metallic f oam, results in an important decrease of the internal resistance of th e cell.