"If they were to replace batteries with these supercapacitors, you could charge your mobile phone in a few seconds and you wouldn't need to charge it again for more than a week," said postdoctoral associate Nitin Choudhary.

Working in the NanoScience Technology Center at UCF (and building on previous work in supercapcitor nanowire technology), the researchers realized their breakthrough by experimenting with the application of newly-discovered 2D materials known as transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) only a few atoms thick to coat 1D nanowires.

Made primarily of layers of tungsten disulfide and tungsten trisulfide deposited using sequential oxidation/sulfurization (alternate layers produced by chemical reactions of oxygen and sulfur), these TMDs coat large "forests" of nanowires to effectively produce a compact array of many individual supercapacitors merged to make a cohesive unit with a large surface area.