A retrospective on the inception and development of structural power composites

This paper sets out the motivation for structural power composites: structural materials imbued with the capability to store and deliver electrical energy. The conception and development of structural supercapacitors at Imperial College London is described, with current devices now starting to approach the performance of conventional ‘monofunctional’ composite laminates and supercapacitors. Although these materials could offer tremendous lightweighting and energy storage benefits, there are considerable research challenges yet to be addressed. Melding of composite mechanics and electrochemistry disciplines leads to a daunting research landscape, so the effort has been partitioned into four themes: Constituent Development , Device Assembly and Characterisation , Multifunctional Modelling and Design and Scale-Up and Demonstration . This paper culminates by setting out, for each theme, where future research should focus to advance this exciting technology.