Juliacon 2024

Circuit Model Discovery for Porous Silicon-Based Supercapacitors
07-10, 18:30–19:00 (Europe/Amsterdam), Function (4.1)

With an ever-increasing complexity in supercapacitors’ structure, it has become that much harder to find a feasible circuit model which could and should aid in the physical modelling of a supercapacitor towards a better understanding of the physical processes involved in its electrical behaviour. This work proposes a different method of finding a circuit model for a porous Si-based supercapacitor using ModelingToolkit.jl and DifferentialEquations.jl.


Supercapacitors have been gaining more attention in the past few decades due to their potential of replacing batteries as the main portable energy storage device and while many breakthroughs have been made in this particular department, there is still an aspect to it that is most often brushed aside, the circuit modelling.
Although it is true that performing circuit modelling on a supercapacitor would be a useful tool towards a better understanding of its complex processes that contribute to charge transfer and storage, it is also true that finding the said model is a daunting task. As a consequence, most circuit modelling for a supercapacitor is often made through making an array of assumptions and brute forcing the process until a mathematical equivalent, of which there’s an infinity, rather than a physical equivalent is found. From Occam’s razor, a philosophical principle, to infinite RC ladders, a valid, yet brute force method, it has become apparent that in order for the supercapacitor science to evolve, a better model discovery strategy is needed to constrain the space of possible circuit variants.
This work proposes using Julia’s arsenal of modelling tools on supercapacitor data, specifically electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry, towards finding a circuit model directly derived from said data. The main principle of this modelling strategy consists in starting with an RC circuit configuration and updating on it as more information from the data is introduced, so rather than coming up with an infinite RC ladder circuit, the exact configuration of specific resistances and capacitances will be discovered from the information offered by Nyquist, Bode and CV (cyclic voltammetry) graphs.

I am a researcher at National Institute for Research and Development in Microtechnologies -IMT Bucharest and a phD student at University of Bucharest, Faculty of Physics. My main interests in research are electrical measurements and supercapacitors and I'm interested in expanding my knowledge of Julia towards developing physical and circuit models for supercapacitors.