High-tech use for garlic skin – supercapacitors (new study)

Attention electronic engineers – stuck for a suitable material for creating supercapacitor electrodes? Have you thought about carbonized garlic skin? If not, may we recommend a new research paper scheduled for publication in the journal Nanoscale – entitled ‘Synthesis of Garlic Skin-Derived 3D Hierarchical Porous Carbon for High-Performance Supercapacitors’. 

Researchers Qing Zhang, Kuihua Han, Shijie Li, Ming Li, Jinxiao Li and Ke Ren of the School of Energy and Power Engineering at Shandong University, China have discovered that a “facile” chemical activation process can turn ordinary garlic skin into a super high-tech electrode material :

“ … the as-obtained carbon exhibits a hierarchical porous structure, which provides ideal channels for ion diffusion with low migration resistances, enabling an excellent rate performance and cycling stability in aqueous electrolytes. The garlic-skin-derived 3D hierarchical porous carbon, therefore, becomes a promising electrode material for supercapacitors.”

Their garlic-skin-based supercapacitors withstood 5,000 changing/discharging cycles, with a capacitance retention as high as 94%.