Keeping Electrolytes in Porous Electrodes: Electrochemical capacitors (ECs) can rapidly charge and discharge, but generally store less energy per unit volume than batteries. One approach for improving on the EC electrodes made from porous carbon materials is to use materials such as chemically converted graphene (CCG, or reduced graphene oxide), in which intrinsic corrugation of the sheets should maintain high surface areas. In many cases, however, these materials do not pack into compact electrodes, and any ECs containing them have low energy densities. Yang et al. (p. 534 ) now show that capillary compression of gels of CCG containing both a volatile and nonvolatile electrolyte produced electrodes with a high packing density. The intersheet spacing creates a continuous ion network and leads to high energy densities in prototype ECs.

A combination of experiments and simulations unveils unusual nanoconfined ion transport in layered graphene membranes.