Lamborghini and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have patented a new synthetic material that the carmaker hopes will serve as the technological base for a new generation of supercapacitors. The two organizations began working together in 2017, when they produced the Terzo Millennio concept car.

With support from Lamborghini’s Concept Development Department, a research team led by MIT Chemistry Professor Mircea Dincă synthesized the new material. The material is based on the Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOF) concept, which are materials that feature a cage-like structure and therefore a large surface area.

This large surface area makes the material the ideal candidate for producing electrodes for future high-performance supercapacitors, says Lamborghini. The material maximizes the specific surface area, which is the amount of surface area exposed to electric charge, in relation to the material’s mass and surface area. Researchers hope to improve the energy density of the material up to 100% compared to the technology currently on the market, as well as work out large-scale production.

Lamborghini is also collaborating with a separate MIT research team to establish new design principles for high-performance battery materials.

Lamborghini CEO Stefano Domenicali said, “The joint research with MIT fully embodies our values and our vocation for anticipating the future: a future in which hybridization is increasingly desirable and inevitably necessary.”

Source: Lamborghini

