Aloe vera plants turned into energy-storing supercapacitors

Aloe vera can be used to make a supercapacitor, a device that stores energy and is similar to a battery but discharges power faster. The supercapacitor can also be installed inside a living plant, to be used to power lights or charge low-power devices.

Yang Zhao at the Beijing Institute of Technology in China and her colleagues have built the supercapacitor almost entirely from different parts of an aloe vera plant, with no additional materials apart from a single gold wire.

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