CAP-XX Demonstrates Surface Mountable Supercapacitors: Meets industry requests for supercapacitors capable of mass assembly

Sydney, Australia | Posted on June 17th, 2009

CAP-XX engineers sent several working prototypes of the SMT supercapacitors though a reflow oven at 260 degrees C. Before reflow, the thin, prismatic prototypes had ESRs (equivalent-series resistance) of 60 and 100 milliohms, capacitances of 1.0 and 0.5 Farads, and voltage ratings of 2.75 and 5.5V, respectively. The process had only minimal impact on performance, changing the ESR and capacitance by less than 10%.
"A high-power, surface-mountable supercapacitor with the CAP-XX characteristics of a thin, small form factor has been the holy grail for the portable electronics industry, particularly mobile handsets," said Anthony Kongats, CAP-XX CEO. "The preservation of performance demonstrated in this trial meets the requirements of these customer groups."
CAP-XX is developing SMT devices to facilitate the adoption of supercapacitor-enabled power architectures in high-end feature phones and other consumer electronics devices. Current CAP-XX devices are manually soldered onto the PCB (printed-circuit board).
"Supercapacitors will soon become a key component in mobile computing products," said Craig Mathias, a principal with Farpoint Group, an advisory firm specializing in wireless networking and mobile computing. "A supercapacitor handles the large instantaneous power demands of flash photos, audio, video, and wireless transmissions, maximizing battery life and enabling the use of smaller batteries. Given ever-increasing demands on battery power from higher clock rates and greater functionality, the supercapacitor is about to take center stage in mobile-power applications."
Mathias continued, "CAP-XX's SMT capability is an impressive development from a leader in the supercapacitor space."
CAP-XX supercapacitors store charge on nanoporous carbon electrodes on aluminum foil, arranged in multiple layers and connected in parallel to minimize resistance and maximize capacitance. This packs the highest energy and power densities possible into thin (0.9 to 3.8mm), prismatic packages.
The company did not disclose expected availability for its SMT devices.