silicon chips

Solar cells that produce electricity 24/7, not just when the sun is shining. Mobile phones with built-in power cells that recharge in seconds and work for weeks between charges. These are just two of the possibilities raised by a novel supercapacitor design invented by material scientists at Vanderbilt University.

For decades, electronic devices have been getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller. It’s now possible—even routine—to place millions of transistors on a single silicon chip. But transistors based on semiconductors can only get so small.