There are a lot of researchers working on capacitor strategies for energy storage, but until now, none have successfully synthesized and tested stand-up 3D zinc oxide nanowires. Researchers at Fudan University have recently done this, and have characterized these structures for energy storage.

They found that these capacitors have a high capacitance density around 10 times that of planar capacitors of similar materials, and also low current leakage.

In their article, “Low-Cost and High-Productivity Three-Dimensional Nanocapacitors Based on Stand-Up ZnO Nanowires for Energy Storage” recently published in Nanoscale Research Letters, Lei Wei, Qi-Xuan Liu, Bao Zhu, Wen-Jun Liu, Shi-Jin Ding, Hong-Liang Lu, Anquan Jiang, and David Wei Zhang developed a six-step process for making these capacitors at low cost. First they deposit the zinc oxide on a substrate, grow the stand-up nanowires, deposit an electrode layer, deposit a dielectric layer, then a top electrode layer, and then they remove part of the deposited material to form the capacitors. They then set out to characterize these capacitors for capacitance and leakage current to see how well they could absorb and hold a charge.

They found that these capacitors have a high capacitance density around 10 times that of planar capacitors of similar materials, and also low current leakage. Additionally, fabricating costs for these capacitors are low, making this technique a good choice for making low-cost, high capacitance-density capacitors for energy storage.

You can read the entire article here.