CAPACITOR TECH TALK Breakthroughs or bullsh*t?

John Miller sorts the wheat from the chaff in this quarter's capacitor tech talk.

A surprising number of papers on ruthenium oxide are given at international scientific meetings and published with great frequency in the various electrochemical journals. Why such interest in a material that is so extremely expensive, and in such short supply? 

Ruthenium oxide is a highly reversible, pseudocapacitive charge-storage material that, operating with a sulphuric acid electrolyte, does in fact provide very spectacular performance.

It works by the so-called 'double-injection' process whereby an electron from the solid, in combination . . .