A Survey of Supercapacitors, Their Applications,

Power Design with Supercapacitors, and Future

Directions
Pierre Mars
V ice President, Applications Engineering, CAP-XX, Australia
Pierre.mars@cap-xx.com

Over the last 10 years supercapacitors have grown from

rate. The supercapactor also enables engine cranking at sub

infancy with sales of $US40M in 2002 to a strongly emerging

zero temperatures. Supercapacitors are used in HEV buses

technology with sales of US$450M last year. This represents

to boost power reducing the size of the ICE. Supercapcitors

an annual growth rate of 35%. Forecasts for the next 5 years

are charged from regenerative braking as well as by the ICE

show growth continuing at

25% - 30% with sales of

$1.5B

in 2015.

improving fuel efficiency. There are now supercapacitor only

powered EV buses operating in Shanghai. These have a short

Supercapacitors are electrical double layer capacitors with

rage of

5Km but are rapidly re-charged at bus stops with

no dielectric. Charge transport is by ions dissolved in an

charging stations. Finally, the Honda Fuel Cell car uses a

electrolyte. They are "super" because of the very high surface

supercapacitor module as a power buffer for the fuel cell,

area of their porous carbon electrodes (2000 - 3000m2/gm),

which cannot respond to rapid changes in power. Other heavy

and the very small separation distance between the +ve and -ve

duty applications include regenerative braking in rail and

charge, measured in Angstroms. The electrodes have a porous

battery-less UPS to ride through short power interruptions of

separator between them. The ions in the electrolyte are against

a few seconds.

the surface of the electrodes. Capacitance is proportional to

The first widespread application for small supercapacitors

the surface area and volume of the carbon electrodes. ESR

was power support for GSMlGPRS modems in PC Cards. The

depends on the active area, the conductivity of the electrolyte

source power was limited to 3.3W while the power drawn

and carbon, the porosity, thickness and tortuosity of the sepa

during transmission was up to 7W with a 25% or 50% duty

rator. Since there is no dielectric, the rated voltage depends on

cycle. This migrated to USB modems where the source power

the breakdown voltage of the electrolyte. There are two types

was limited to 2.5W. The second wideapread application, still

of electrolyte: organic and aqueous. Aqueous electrolytes are

in common use today, is to support GPRS transmission in

stable to

ruggedized PDA's where operation may be required in sub

0.9V, organic electrolytes to 2.7Y. Supercapacitor

cells must be stacked in series to achieve a useful working

zero temperatures where the Li-Ion battery cannot provide the

voltage.

power required.

Supercapacitors are broadly divided into 2 segments: large

The largest market today for small supercapacitors is Au

cans from 100F - 5000F used for heavy duty applications such

tomatic Meter Reading, especially for gas & water. Typically

as automotive and utilities, and small devices in the range

these meters are powered by long life high impedance batteries

from O.1F - lOF used in general electronics. A useful way to

that cannot provide the power to transmit their data, and use

compare supercapacitors is to use a Ragone Plot which plots

a supercapacitor for this function.

Power Density vs Energy Density.

The largest potential market for small supercapacitors is

Supercapacitors enable high power applications that would

mobile phones, where supercapacitors can enhance LED Flash

otherwise be impractical. A supercapacitor acts as a power

and audio. Several supercapacitor LED Flash ICs have been

buffer. The source provides low average power to the super

released in anticipation of this market, which has been held

capcitor. The low ESR 's enable very high power delivery to

back because supercapacitors cannot yet be reflow soldered.

the load and very high capacitance stores sufficient energy

Two emerging markets for supercapcitors are energy har

to deliver that peak power for the duration needed in many

vesting and SSDs. In SSDs, supercapacitors are used to

applications.
Supercapacitors have many automotive applications. Most

provide power backup so the cache RAM can be flushed in

the event of a power failure. The one problem supercapacitors

prevalent today is their use in Start-Stop systems. The engine

have had that have held back wider acceptance in the SSD

is stopped when idling saving up to 15% fuel in city driving.

market is long life at sustained high temperatures. In energy

Maxwell are providing Continental AG supercapacitors for a

harvesting applications, supercapacitors have longer life than

Start-Stop systems used in PSA Peugot Citroen diesel cars.

batteries and are much simpler to charge, needing only over

The supercapacitor cranks the engine saving the battery, which

voltage protection rather than charge current at a constant

delivers charge current to the supercapacitor at a much lower

voltage like a battery.

Supercapacitors do not behave as ideal capacitors. This

paper will look at issues in designing with supercapacitors
including inrush current, frequency response, introduce the
concept of effective capacitance, leakage current behaviour,
charging behaviour with low charge current, ageing, cell
balancing and charging from energy harvesters.
Finally the paper looks at future trends for supercapacitors
including, hybrid capacitors, new materials, improving life and
surface mount technology.