Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Drexel University and their partners have discovered a way to improve the energy density of promising energy-storage materials, conductive two-dimensional ceramics called MXenes. The findings are published in Nature Energy.

Today’s batteries, which rely on charge stored in the bulk of their electrodes, offer high energy-storage capacity, but slow charging speeds limit their application in consumer electronics and electric vehicles. Tomorrow’s energy-storage mainstays may be electrochemical capacitors, known as supercapacitors, which store charge at the surface of their electrode material for fast charging and discharging. However, at present supercapacitors lack the charge-storage capacity, or energy density, of batteries.

View the full press release here.