Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 164 (7) A1487-A1488 (2017) A1487

A Guideline for Reporting Performance Metrics with

Electrochemical Capacitors: From Electrode Materials
to Full Devices
A. Balducci,a,b,∗,z D. Belanger,c T. Brousse,d,e,∗ J. W. Long,f,∗ and W. Sugimotog,∗
a Institute for Technical Chemistry and Environmental Chemistry, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, 07743 Jena,
Germany
b Center for Energy and Environmental Chemistry Jena (CEEC Jena), Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, 07743 Jena,
Germany
c Departement Chimie, Université du Québec à Montréal, Succursale Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 3P8, Canada
d Institut des Matériaux Jean Rouxel (IMN), Université de Nantes, CNRS, 44322 Nantes Cedex 3, France
e Réseau sur le Stockage Electrochimique de l’Energie (RS2E), FR CNRS 3459, France
f Code 6170, Surface Chemistry Branch, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC 20375, USA
g Materials and Chemical Engineering, Shinshu University, Tokida 3-15-1, Ueda 386-8567 Japan

Over the past decade, interest in electrochemical capacitors as an energy-storage technology has increased enormously, spurring the
development and evaluation of a large number of new materials and device configurations. This perspective article aims to propose
guidelines by which new materials and devices should be evaluated, and how resulting data should be reported with respect to critical
metrics such as capacitance, energy and power.
© The Author(s) 2017. Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse of the work in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited. [DOI: 10.1149/2.0851707jes] All rights reserved.

Manuscript submitted March 21, 2017; revised manuscript received May 5, 2017. Published May 12, 2017.

In recent years the number of publications dedicated to electro-
chemical capacitors (ECs) has increased enormously, while drawing
from a diverse community of researchers in the fields of electrochem-
istry, material science, and engineering.1,2 Contributions from such
different perspectives have been invaluable to the advancement of EC
science and technology, but has also resulted in some confusion in the
corresponding scientific literature because of the wide range of mate-
rials (active and inactive), device configurations, and electrochemical
testing protocols that are used.
Current Status
Unfortunately, a comparison of the electrochemical properties of
materials for EC is often challenging because key experimental param-
eters and procedures are not fully described in literature reports, and
in some cases data from single electrode experiments are improperly
extrapolated to projected device performance. Inconsistency in re-
porting key performance metrics hinders the comparison of data from
different laboratories on otherwise related materials and devices.1,2
The present perspective article identifies some useful guidelines for
correctly evaluating the electrochemical performance of EC materials
and devices and reporting on the resulting findings.
Future Needs and Prospects
Materials for ECs (electrode and electrolyte).—When a new (ac-
tive) material is proposed, its synthesis procedure should be described
in detail sufficient to allow for replication in another laboratory; basic
material properties should be also reported (particle/crystallite/film
morphology, crystal structure, etc). Any electrode preparation using
the resulting materials must be clearly described, including informa-
tion on the respective ratios (or weight %) between active material,
conductive agent (if present) and binder(s) used in electrode fabrica-
tion. Furthermore, one should report the active material mass loading
per electrode area, for example in units of mg cm−2 . This informa-
tion is essential for readers to clearly evaluate the electrochemical
performance of both the active material and full device, particularly
when comparing against results from other laboratories or from com-
mercial products. Authors should consider that the mass loading of
commercialized activated carbon electrodes is ∼10 mg cm−2 .
∗ Electrochemical Society Member.
z
E-mail: andrea.balducci@uni-jena.de
When a new electrolyte component (solvent or salt) is proposed,
the composition of the investigated electrolyte should be clearly de-
scribed, for example with concentration of the salts noted in units of
mol L−1 . The viscosity and ionic conductivity of the proposed elec-
trolyte at room temperature (and over a broader temperature range if
available) should be reported. The electrochemical stability window
of new electrolyte compositions is also an important performance
characteristic. Linear-sweep voltammetry is the most suitable elec-
trochemical technique for such tests, where the temperature and the
sweep (scan) rate conditions should be noted.3 Information about the
density, boiling point, flash point, thermal stability of new electrolytes
would be also very beneficial for readers.
Single electrode capacitance.—Capacitance is the ability of an
electrode to electrostatically store electric charge, and its SI unit
is the Farad (F).4 In order to assign a meaningful value of capac-
itance to an electrode, the stored electric charge on the active ma-
terial should be delivered with a linear dependence on potential (or
voltage) over a given operating window under galvanostatic testing
conditions. Electrode materials that exhibit such capacitive behav-
ior range from activated carbons (AC), which stores charges pri-
marily through double-layer capacitance, to pseudocapacitive metal
oxides, such as MnO2 , where charge storage arises from faradaic
mechanisms.4 The CVs of these materials should display the typical
“rectangular shape,” which, depending of the applied scan rate and
voltage, might result more or less distorted,4,5 and the correspond-
ing capacitance expressed in F g−1 (gravimetric capacitance), F cm−3
(volumetric capacitance), and F cm−2 (areal capacitance). Providing
capacity values, e.g. expressed in C g−1 , would be valueable even
with materials that show a clear capacitive signature. When com-
paring capacitance values and rate-dependent response with other
electrode materials, special care must be taken to choose similar
mass loading/thickness for all electrodes/devices involved in the
comparison.
In some cases, battery-type materials such as Ni(OH)2 are reported
for use in ECs (for example paired with an activated carbon electrode).
Because such materials exhibit well-defined peaks in their CVs that
are typical of kinetically irreversible redox behavior (non-electrostatic
behavior), values of capacitance must not be assigned. Instead, the
capacity, expressed in units of C g−1 or mAh g−1 , should be reported
as it is the most appropriate metric for describing the charge-storage
performance of these redox materials.5

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 A1488 Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 164 (7) A1487-A1488 (2017)
Operating voltage.—In the case of electrodes based on capacitive
materials, the operative voltage depends mainly on the electrochem-
ical stability of the electrolyte used. There is no standard procedure
for determinating the operative voltage of an EC device; however, it is
recommended that the electrochemical potential window of each elec-
trode be evaluated and reported, for example, by using voltammetry
with progressively increasing potential limits in a three-electrode half-
cell, prior to assembling a two-electrode cell. The maximum limit is
defined by fixing a threshold for the coulombic efficiency (e.g., 99%)
below which the charge-storage process is not considered effective.2
In the case of pseudocapacitive materials, the useful electrochemi-
cal window depends on the potential range over which the faradaic
charge-storage process occurs. Such information is critical to the de-
sign of a successful two-electrode cell, where masses of the positive
and negative electrodes should be adjusted to balance charge storage,
after which the operating voltage of the full device can be determined.
Micro and macro supercapacitors.—Some distinction must
be made between conventional macroscale ECs and micro-
supercapacitors when considering how to express particular perfor-
mance metrics. Conventional ECs are typically constructed at cell
sizes from a few cm3 up to one dm3 for applications ranging from
consumer electronics to transportation. For the final user, the weight
and volume of such ECs are key parameters when choosing products
for a particular application, thus gravimetric or/and volumetric met-
rics are the most critical. Active material loadings should also be on
the order of 5–10 mg cm−2 (electrode thickness ≈ 100 μm) in order to
achieve relevant amounts of stored energy.6 While it is relatively easy
to provide gravimetric values, volumetric parameters may be more
challenging to assess at the bench scale where electrode volume may
depend on the particular fabrication process, and the packaging of
prototype cells not yet optimized. Nevertheless, when it can be reli-
ably measured at the electrode level, volumetric capacitance should
be reported.
Micro-supercapacitors are designed with thin-film electrodes as-
sembled in various configurations,6 typically at the scale of mm2
or cm2 footprint area, with the goal of complementing or replacing
microbatteries in applications that include power sensors and mi-
croelectronic devices. In many such applications, area-normalized
capacitance (F cm−2 ), energy, and power (based on the footprint of
the device) are the most important performance metrics. Electrode
and device thickness (including electrolyte, current collectors, pack-
aging) should be reported where practical. The thickness of micro-
supercapacitors must be limited to few hundreds of μm, which is one
reason why interdigitated-electrode designs have been favored.6
Cycling stability.—Electrochemical capacitors are distinguished
from batteries not only by their high-power characteristics but also by
extended cycle life. Thus, cycling stability is an important considera-
tion when evaluating new materials or device configurations for ECs.
Galvanostatic charge/discharge cycling is the most common method
for determining cycling stability. While cycling tests in 3-electrode
half-cell configurations may provide preliminary information on ma-
terial stability, tests on 2-electrode devices yield more realistic cycle-
life data. When reporting on cycling stability, current densities and
voltage ranges (which, for an EC device, cannot be <0 V) used during
the charge/discharge test must be clearly stated. For devices based on
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capacitive materials (e.g., high-surface-area carbons) at least 10,000
cycles should be reported. In the case of pseudocapacitive materials,
5,000 cycles might be sufficient.
Another method that can be used to assess cycling stability is the
so-called “float test”,3 in which the device should be held at a defined
voltage for at least 50–100 hours while periodically sampling (e.g.,
every 20 h) with impedance measurements and charge/discharge or
CVs. It should be noted that the two aforementioned tests supply
different types of data, and thus it would be advisable to perform both
tests in order to gain the most information regarding the stability of
new EC devices.
Energy, power and ragone plot.—Metrics of energy and power
(whether mass- or volume-normalized) must only be derived for a 2-
electrode device, and not for a single electrode. The type of calculated
energy and power, e.g., maximum or average, should be clearly stated.
In order to obtain a realistic assessment of the energy of a device, it
is advisable to calculate the integral of the galvanostatic discharge
curve (average energy).7 From this value, one can calculate directly
the average power. As indicated in many studies, the values of energy
and power obtained for a lab cell do not represent the performance
of a real device.8 Values derived from the former should be divided
for a factor of at least 4–5 in order to extrapolate to expected device
performance.8 The Ragone plot is a convenient representation of the
energy and power of ECs, but is important to collect data from at
least 4 different current densities to reflect the performance of a given
device.
Conclusions
The evaluation of capacitance, energy and power of electrochemi-
cal capacitors is essential for the continued development and applica-
tion of these devices. Yet, such parameters have often not been prop-
erly represented and reported in the associated scientific literature.
This perspective article supplies guidelines regarding best practices
for determining key performance factors for electrochemical capaci-
tors, and addresses performance vs. design considerations for macro
and micro-based devices.
Acknowledgments
JWL acknowledges the support of the U. S. Office of Naval
Research. AB acknowledges the support of the Friedrich-Schiller-
University Jena.
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