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Cite This: ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2019, 7, 3688−3691 pubs.acs.org/journal/ascecg

Metrics for Fast Supercapacitors as Energy Storage Devices

Ali Eftekhari*
Belfast Academy, 2 Queens Road, Belfast BT3 9FG, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT: Supercapacitors are investigated as an energy

storage device alternative to batteries, but their electro-
chemical performance is usually inspected with the metrics of
classic capacitors. The resulting inconsistency in the literature
has caused confusion about the potentials and limitations of
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supercapacitors. First, the average power density of a

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supercapacitor cannot be directly compared with the relatively

constant power density of counterpart batteries. Second,
specific capacitance is the capability of capacitors for charge
separation by the potential perturbation and does not represent the capacity for energy storage when the delivered charge has a
nonlinear dependency on the potential. Third, many new supercapacitors are not even faster than their counterpart batteries to
justify practical development, but the problem is buried under the shield of inappropriate metrics. This paper clarifies that
employing the appropriate metrics for energy storage can lead us in the designing of faster supercapacitors for practical
applications.
KEYWORDS: Supercapacitors, Specific capacitance, Power density, Fast charging, Rate capability, Batteries

T he increasing demand for new types of energy storage

devices has emerged a confusing overlap between
supercapacitors and batteries, though this boundary has been
of interest for a long time.1,2 Batteries store energy by storing
the charge slowly through an electrochemical reaction, whereas
capacitors separate the charge through double layer charging,
which is quite fast through rearrangement of the ions at the
atomic scale. The latter process is several orders of magnitude
faster than the slow solid-state diffusion in batteries. However,
in practice, supercapacitors are entangled with sluggish
processes because it is not the pure capacitive response as is
the case in the classic capacitors.3 In fact, the performance of
both double layer capacitors and pseudocapacitors is closer to
In the case of pseudocapacitive supercapacitors, it has been
recently clarified that the underlying electrochemical system is
similar to batteries, and the critical difference is that the
energies of redox sites are distributed over a broad range of
potential in pseudocapacitive materials.4 Because the nearby
redox sites react at different potentials, there is less
competition between them, and thus, the diffusion process is
much faster. In the case of battery systems, the diffusion
coefficient at the redox potential is a few orders of magnitude
smaller than the other potentials. In other words, the prime
advantage of supercapacitors is the capability for faster
charging/discharging. Otherwise, the decaying potential is a
disadvantage, which should be addressed by regulating the
output voltage in the final product.

that of batteries rather than classic capacitors (including
electrolytic capacitors). Nevertheless, supercapacitors are
judged by the classic metrics of capacitors while being utilized
as an alternative to batteries.
Historically, supercapacitors aimed at specific applications
where limited energy was required such as uninterrupted
power sources (UPSs), but the current trend is to use them as
energy storage devices, e.g., in electric vehicles (a good
example of commercial development is the so-called Capabus,
supercapacitor-powered bus in China). Therefore, it is of vital
importance to examine supercapacitors against their capacity
for energy storage rather than capacitive performance. The
terminology of supercapacitors has been described elsewhere.4
Although Conway coined the term for both double layer and
pseudocapacitive performance, it has been used as a
commercial name at the same time. In any case, terminology
debate is meaningless, as the term supercapacitor is commonly
used by the researchers for both double layer and
pseudocapacitive materials.
■
CYCLIC VOLTAMMETRY
The rate capability of batteries is reasonably judged by the C-
rate, which is indeed an industrial method of presentation, but
commonly followed in the fundamental research as well. 1C
equals the current required to achieve the theoretical capacity
within an hour. Because the theoretical capacity is not known
for supercapacitors, the applied current is directly reported in-
stead. Owing to different values of the specific capacitance
reported in the literature, one cannot simply estimate the
practical power of a supercapacitor. The general impression is
based on the cyclic voltammetry, which uses the same unit for
charging/discharging. Roughly speaking (based on a quick
overview of the literature), one can realize typical values of the
potential scan rate are 1 mV s−1 for batteries, 10 mV s−1 for
Received: December 1, 2017
Revised: March 26, 2018
Published: September 10, 2018

© 2018 American Chemical Society 3688 DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.7b04532

ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2019, 7, 3688−3691
ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering Feature

Figure 1. Panels a and b compares the actual time required for charging/discharging of a battery and a supercapacitor, respectively, at a typical scan
rate of 10 mV s−1. Panel c illustrates the changes in power density during discharging and possible deviation from the theoretical performance. The
theoretical and practical power density curves are shown by dashed and solid lines. Panel d demonstrates that the potential window has no impact
on the specific capacitance of an ideal supercapacitor (or theoretically), but has an enormous impact on that of real supercapacitors (e). This
impact is much stronger for batteries (f). If calculating the specific capacitance for a battery, the specific capacitance becomes extremely large (inset
of panel f). The units are for the sake of comparison only, and the discharge current is assumed 1 A g−1. Note that these numbers are typical values
for the sake of comparison rather than actual values. It can be seen as a sort of normalization.

pseudocapacitors, and 100 mV s−1 for double layer capacitors.
In other words, if briefly browsing the literature, the cyclic
voltammograms of battery materials are usually recorded with
scan rates in the range of 0.1−1 mV s−1, pseudocapacitors in
the range of 1−10 mV s−1, and double layer capacitors in the
range of 10−100 mV s−1. Nevertheless, this might be
misleading, as the charge/discharge rate depends on the peak
width. In Figure 1a,b, if hypothetically assuming that the
overall capacities of the battery and supercapacitor are equal,
the battery needs only 10 s for the passage of the total number
of electrons; whereas, the supercapacitor needs the entire
experiment time of 100s to do so at a typical scan rate of 10
mV s−1. Therefore, the potential scan rate in cyclic
voltammetry is not an appropriate metric for comparing
batteries and supercapacitors. Note that this is just a schematic
model highlighting that the scan rate in cyclic voltammetry
does not represent the same time scale of charge/discharge for
supercapacitors and batteries.
The shape of the peaks in cyclic voltammetry can provide
useful information about both kinetics and thermodynamics of
battery materials. Even in the case of supercapacitors, deviation
from featureless CV (rectangular shape) is quite informative.
The point emphasized here is not about the usefulness of cyclic
voltammetry but the inappropriate interpretation of the
potential scan rate. It is mistakenly believed that if a
supercapacitor is well performed at the potential scan rate of
10 mV s−1, this means the energy storage is much faster than a
battery material. The above illustration demonstrates that the
rate capability of this supercapacitor is still at the level of a
battery material, which is performed under 1 mV s−1. It should
be kept in mind that it does not matter that the cyclic
voltammetry is performed with three-electrode cells; the point
of comparison here is the total time required for charging the
half- or full-cell. This discussion is not limited to super-
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capacitors and also covers conversion-based battery materials,
which have a pseudocapacitive nature.5
■ GALVANOSTATIC CHARGE/DISCHARGE PROFILES
One may argue that the primary metric for judging the rate
capability is the power density, which is the same for both
batteries and supercapacitors. The power of a battery is
calculated by the standard equation of P = VI, where I is the
applied current and V the cell voltage, which is constant. The
power of a supercapacitor is proportional to its decaying
voltage. The power densities reported in the literature are
indeed the average values estimated from the point of 50%
discharge. In the ideal supercapacitor performance, the power
supplied decreases when discharging (Figure 1c). As an energy
storage device, a constant power should be supplied, and thus,
the power supply should be electronically regulated (techni-
cally, regulating the voltage by consuming a higher current).
This means that the cell should be discharged faster to
compensate its decaying power to compete with the counter-
part battery. So much the worse, deviation from the ideal
behavior, which is inevitable, causes a rapid decline in the
power density in supercapacitors (Figure 1c). Moreover, it is
obvious that reporting the maximum power density Pmax is not
useful for a supercapacitor. As a rough estimation, in a
supercapacitor with a Pmax twice that of its counterpart battery,
the power density delivered is less than that of the battery
during most of the discharge time (Figure 1c). Furthermore,
this deviation significantly reduces the energy efficiency, which
is of vital importance in energy storage devices.6
■ SPECIFIC CAPACITANCE
Another misleading parameter is the specific capacitance,
which is indeed the first metric reported in the literature. In
2017, 50% of the papers on supercapacitors reported the
specific capacitance as a key metric right in the abstract (this
DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.7b04532
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Table 1. Comparing the Energy Storage Performance of Supercapacitor and Battery Materials with Various Metricsa
specific specific scan rate in charging
potential capacity capacitance voltammetry applied current in duration
material system range (V) (mAh g−1) (F g−1) (mV s−1) galvanostatic (A g−1) (s) ref.
aluminum electrolytic capacitor 0−20 0.001 5
microporous double layer capacitor 0−1.0 55 200 100 20 10 6
carbon (aqueous)
porous carbon double layer capacitor 0−3.0 165 200 100 20 30 6−8
(non-aqueous)
polyaniline pseudocapacitor 0−0.8 110 500 10 2 80 9
ruthenium pseudocapacitor 0−1.0 220 800 10 4 60 6
oxide
germanium lithium-ion battery 0−1.5 500 1200 400 500 3.6 10
(anode)
LiFePO4 lithium-ion battery 3.4−3.5 150 5400 1 2 100 11
(cathode)
Li4Ti4O12 lithium-ion battery 1.5−1.55 150 10800 1 1 50 10,12,13
(anode)
a
The values are typical averages for each case derived from the literature. The cited reviews and comprehensive tables therein can be used for this
purpose. Note that it is just a schematic comparison to stress how the actual rate of charging/discharging might be different from the values given
by the common metrics.

stands for over 2000 papers). Capacitance is the electrode
capability in separating the charge in response to the potential
difference, which is of importance in the functionality of
capacitors in electronic circuits. Now that the prime purpose of
supercapacitors is energy storage, this does not provide any
meaningful information, at least in comparative studies. High
capacitance means that a capacitor is capable of separating a
significant amount of charge by a tiny change in the applied
potential. If calculating the specific capacitance for batteries
(i.e., not common), the value is much higher than that of
supercapacitors. Table 1 compares typical metrics for super-
capacitors and batteries (these are typical values for the sake of
comparison, but the corresponding experimental data can be
found in the literature, see, for example, comprehensive
references 5, 7−14). These are simply typical materials in each
category for a comparative outlook of the categories, not
materials. For instance, it is highlighted that charging new
anode materials (such as Ge, Si, etc.) is faster than available
double layer capacitors. It is irrelevant here that these anode
materials suffer from volume expansion, which should be
tackled for the practical development. The point is that the
emerging battery materials are faster with higher power
densities as compared with the available supercapacitors.
This pictures the competition ahead for supercapacitor if the
target application is energy storage.
Though the specific capacitance of an ideal capacitor is
potential-independent (Figure 1d), the nonlinear dependence
in supercapacitors (particularly pseudocapacitors) makes the
potential cutoffs critically important (Figure 1e). Depending
on the width of the potential window, the specific capacitance
can be massively changed. The point is that specific
capacitance does not provide useful information for energy
storage. Brousse et al. similarly stressed that it is misleading to
interpret the battery performance of some electroactive
materials such as Ni(OH)2 as pseudocapacitive materials.15
As illustrated in the inset of Figure 1f, limiting the potential
window for some battery materials can result in an enormously
high specific capacitance while exhibiting an ideal capacitive
response. In fact, for ideal battery performance displaying a flat
plateau (e.g., at low discharge rates or in the case of
reconstitution reaction16), the specific capacitance tends to
∞. Moreover, the actual charging/discharging times (i.e., the
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practical measure for the commercial products) are in the same
range, whereas the power density would suggest significantly
higher values for supercapacitors. It is also evident that power
density is not the appropriate measure to compare the rate
capability of supercapacitors and batteries due to their different
power supply scheme.
■ IMPEDANCE SPECTROSCOPY
Impedance spectroscopy is a powerful technique in the realm
of electrochemistry, which can also be used for estimating the
rate capability of energy storage systems, as the frequency is
representative of the charge/discharge rate (though via an AC
signal).17 Although impedance spectroscopy is the prime
technique for measuring the rate capability of ultrafast
supercapacitors that are primarily aimed for AC line filter-
ing,7,17,18 this opportunity is ignored for examining the rate
capability of conventional supercapacitors or batteries. A
recent model has described the similarities of these systems
and their corresponding impedance responses.3,17
■ CONCLUDING REMARKS
Overall, the characteristic advantage of batteries is high
capacity (i.e., high energy), and that of supercapacitors is
high rate capability (i.e., high power). It should be taken into
account that the rate capability of batteries is much higher if
the full capacity is not targeted because severe factors limiting
the charging rate occur at higher degrees of charge status. A
commercial example is Tesla car model S3, whose battery can
be charged to the level of 80% within 30 min (with
supercharging outlet, of course), but an extra hour is required
for the remaining 20%. This means for a supercapacitor with
80% of its battery counterpart (i.e., very optimiztic), the
supercapacitor must be at least 3 times faster to compete with
the battery (to reach a competitive position for the future
electric vehicles). This is due to the practical limit for the
voltage cutoff to preserve the cell stability.
In conclusion, there is no distinct boundary between
batteries and supercapacitors. The most promising energy
storage materials have a mixed mechanism. Similar materials
are examined by different metrics owing to different labels.
High-energy supercapacitors for energy storage have no
similarity with capacitors, and unfortunately, the advantage of
DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.7b04532
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ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering
fast performance has been sacrificed in favor of higher energy
storage capacity. Although the energy density of super-
capacitors is approaching that of batteries, still, batteries gain
the considerable advantage of constant power. Therefore,
supercapacitors should be significantly faster to practically
compete with batteries. Achieving a higher specific capacitance
or energy density without considering their real impact on
energy storage19,20 does not help the practical development of
supercapacitors. Instead, the key advantage of supercapacitors,
i.e., fast performance, should be targeted. In designing
supercapacitors for AC line filtering, it has been reported
that supercapacitors can be as fast as electrolytic capaci-
tors,7,17,18 but unfortunately, this strategy of research has not
yet been followed for energy storage.
Inappropriate metrics have caused supercapacitors to lag
behind batteries because majorities of the current research
focus on wrong (or more precisely less useful) cases. Albeit,
this failure has affected the prospect of the alternatives to
lithium-ion batteries as well.21 As described in ref 4, sacrificing
the ordered lattice structure of battery materials results in
diminishing the dominance of solid-state diffusion and thus
faster performance. New battery materials, particularly anode
materials, gain this feature and have pseudocapacitive nature to
some extent.11 Notwithstanding, relying on the inappropriate
metrics discussed, a majority of supercapacitor research is
limited to materials with narrow potential windows (i.e., results
in high specific capacitance but low energy storage capacity) or
slow supercapacitors that cannot compete even with the
available batteries. This does not mean supercapacitors have
less potential for energy storage, but the obsession with the
superficial metric of specific capacitance or wrong interpreta-
tion of power density has overshadowed the prime require-
ment of fast performance.
The problem is that inappropriate metrics give a false
impression that an electroactive material has a potential for
developing a practical supercapacitor. If aligning the graphene
nanosheets vertically, the resulting supercapacitor will be super
fast, which can be charged/discharged with scan rates of up to
500 V s−1 in cyclic voltammetry.7,17,18 However, because the
energy density of this architecture is not high enough, these
supercapacitors are mainly used for AC line filtering. The
energy density is an important factor for energy storage
devices, but if the key advantage of supercapacitors, i.e., high
rate capability, is sacrificed, they cannot compete with the
battery counterparts in the practical applications. Therefore, it
is of vital importance to use appropriate metrics to project
which of the available choices have the practical potentials for
fast energy storage by supercapacitors. The commercialization
of supercapacitor materials mainly depends on their rate
capability to compete with the available batteries because it is
unlikely to beat the energy density of batteries. In this
direction, the metrics should make sense when applied to the
final product.
■ AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*A. Eftekhari. Email: eftekhari@elchem.org.
ORCID
Ali Eftekhari: 0000-0003-3568-4812
Notes
The author declares no competing financial interest.
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Feature
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