UK supercapacitor results suggest challenge to battery technologies

Materials originally developed for soft contact lenses have energy storage properties that could rival the best lithium ion batteries currently available, according to its developer. A series of serendipitous results led Dr Donald Highgate, director of research for Superdielectrics Ltd and alumnus of Surrey University, to realise that material originally developed for quite different applications was outperforming energy storage materials currently on the market, and he now believes these materials could form a vital link in systems to charge large numbers of electric cars.

“I started this about 40 years ago with materials that went on to form the basis of extended wear contact lenses,” Highgate told The Engineer. “So it’s an aqueous hydrocarbon polymer. But we then wondered whether we could use this material as the basis for membranes in fuel cells. Conventional wisdom then said you could only use fluorocarbons because they were more resistant to corrosion. But we found that if you cross-linked all the polymer chains together the material became corrosion resistant because there are no loose ends. I put some sulphonyl into the mix so that it became electrically active and that material now forms the basis for the membranes and electrolysers produced by ITM Power, of which I was a founder.”