Supercapacitor materials are rapidly improving by new routes. The active materials are the dominant part of cost and the cause of limitations such as flammability, toxicity, cost, energy density and self- discharge. Currently the active electrodes almost always consist of bulk "hierarchical" carbon with a range of pore sizes, often made the old way from botanical materials.

In this article IDTechEx gives a short overview of the topic of wide bandgap semiconductors covering the fundamental material science, the key players, the market potential. The impact on a range of applications will also be discussed, with a focus on renewable energy systems and microgrids.

IDTechEx attended the event last week to meet with key stakeholders including industrial OEMs, power module manufacturers, established semiconductor companies and innovative new GaN (gallium nitride) and SiC (silicon carbide) developers to report back on the current and future trends. The following article is the second of two parts and provides a summary of some of the key GaN related developments and at the event and their impact on various industries and applications.

IDTechEx Analyst Dr Na Jiao attended The China International Battery Fair (CIBF), the first legal international battery fair in the Chinese battery industry, which is held every two years.

IDTechEx attended the event last week to meet with key stakeholders including industrial OEMs, power module manufacturers, established semiconductor companies and innovative GaN (gallium nitride and SiC (silicon carbide) developers to report back on the current and future trends.

IDTechEx analyst, Dr Na Jiao, reports her findings from the Battery Show Europe 2018

Here are some outstanding achievements with much further to go: the Lighting a Billion Lives campaign from 2007 and allied work extending into solar weaving, cooking and boat charging.

The Battery Show is one of the largest events around the world on energy storage for electric vehicles, which is held annually in Novi, MI.

The previous article looked at material opportunities for thermal management and this article looks at the additional componentry.

The Battery Show is one of the largest events around the world on energy storage for electric vehicles, which is held annually in Novi, MI.

This two-part series will look at some of the materials opportunities emerging in electric vehicle for both batteries and other componentry. This information will be taking highlights from two recent trade shows: Foam Expo (Novi, USA) and The Battery Show co-located with Electric and hybrid vehicle technology expo.

A recent independent study by Imperial College London has evaluated the potential for new gravity-fed energy storage within the UK energy system. With tens of thousands of vertical mine shafts in the UK alone (UK Coal Authority), the potential initial market is sizeable.

This article provides an overview of energy storage innovations.

Here the IDTechEx analysts in attendance present a commentary on the show's highlights in their respective fields of research

2D materials are going to be much more versatile and useful and that particularly means beyond graphene.

An electrochemical double layer capacitor is purely electrostatic in action, meeting the definition of a capacitor. There are other ways of getting high capacitance and energy density.

Single crystal silicon photovoltaics will now be very affordable, obsoleting polycrystalline Si PV by having efficiency much higher. Laminating it onto supercapacitor sheeting will form a load bearing material that both makes and stores electricity, delivering it exceptionally fast when needed.

From London to Sydney, one-bedroom apartments with a car space attached are becoming a rarity as planners impose tight controls on the provision of parking in new blocks, slashing costs and gridlock.

Off grid electricity production can be broadly scaled in size into four categories as shown in this article.

Primarily, batteries deal with intermittency and inadequacy of electricity supply, the extreme case being complete lack of electricity for moving EVs