Testing has begun on supercapacitors developed by India’s state-run Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET).
Under the department of electronics and information technology, C-MET’s supercapacitors are being trialled in pilot projects at its Thrissur laboratory in Kerala and state-run defence and space agencies.
C-MET director Arun Sachdeva told Indian news service IANS that once testing was completed in trials they would standardise them for other applications.
“We will transfer the technology to the private sector for volume production under our supervision, as they can also be used for industrial and consumer needs,” IANS reported Sachdeva as saying at a recent electronics’ summit in India.
The centre, which has two more labs at Hyderabad and Pune, has invested around Rs.2 crore-Rs.5 crore ($295,000-$738,000) to set up the facility for developing supercapacitors.
C-MET currently imports silicon wafers in the form of chips to make supercapacitors, using graphene-based electrodes with raw materials like carbon aerogel.
India’s automobile OEM Tata Motors is also testing supercapacitors for hybrid electric vehicles, while semi-conductor firm Spel, two-wheel application company Chheda Electrical and R&D set-up Aartech Solonics are developing them in the country’s private sector.
