Smartwatches, phones and even some drones rely on lightweight, rechargeable energy storage systems. Once those devices wear out, many end up as electronic waste. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Energy Letters have developed a compact supercapacitor that can be quickly disassembled into reusable components. They used the devices to power a glider’s propeller and then took apart one supercapacitor and sequentially reused parts in two new ones that performed as well as the original device.
An energy storage device designed to be recycled
