{"id":238674,"date":"2026-06-10T02:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T07:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/water-locked-in-1-nanometer-channels-could-enable-safer-energy-storage"},"modified":"2026-06-10T02:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T07:24:16","slug":"water-locked-in-1-nanometer-channels-could-enable-safer-energy-storage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/water-locked-in-1-nanometer-channels-could-enable-safer-energy-storage","title":{"rendered":"Water locked in 1-nanometer channels could enable safer energy storage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/water-locked-in-1-nanometer-channels-could-enable-safer-energy-storage.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Can pure water store electrical energy? A research team led by Dr. Vasily Artemov within the Cluster of Excellence \u201cBlueMat\u2014Water-Driven Materials\u201d at Hamburg University of Technology has now shown that it can. By confining water within nanometer-sized channels in clay minerals, the researchers created a supercapacitor capable of efficiently storing and transporting electrical charge.<\/p>\n<p>What makes the finding unusual is that it uses pure water as its electrolyte\u2014the medium that transports electrical charge. Today\u2019s batteries and supercapacitors typically rely on added salts, acids, or other chemical electrolytes. In contrast, the new system works without such additives and is based solely on abundant, naturally occurring materials: water, clay, and carbon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur goal is to develop safer and more sustainable energy-storage technologies based on abundant materials rather than complex chemical compounds,\u201d says Artemov, lead author of the paper <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-73924-1\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Nature Communications<\/i>. \u201cThe device stores and releases energy efficiently, operates at a comparatively high voltage for a water-based system, and remains stable over tens of thousands of charging cycles.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can pure water store electrical energy? A research team led by Dr. Vasily Artemov within the Cluster of Excellence \u201cBlueMat\u2014Water-Driven Materials\u201d at Hamburg University of Technology has now shown that it can. By confining water within nanometer-sized channels in clay minerals, the researchers created a supercapacitor capable of efficiently storing and transporting electrical charge. What [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1497,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-energy","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}