The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and FastCAP, a company spun out from the university, developed a device that they say recharges in seconds, has a long life, and operates near 100% efficiency. More important, FastCAP says, it can store up to 10 times the energy of ultracapacitors now on the market.

An ultracapacitor developed at MIT may boost energy story capacities. The company says that its devices, which is as small as AA batteries, are among the only commercial units that can withstand temperatures as low as -110C and as high as 300C. These characteristics have led to their use in oil and gas drilling operations, and created potential in aerospace and electric vehicles.

The current product springs from a breakthrough in ultracapacitor design from the late 2000s. Earlier designs typically relied on electrode plates coated with porous activated carbon. The MIT and FastCAP teams discovered they could increase surface area for ion attraction — and storage capacity — by using an array of vertical carbon nanotubes instead of the activated carbon coating.