So here's some more article quotes lol > Ulm and his team mixed a small percent of carbon black with cement powder and added water. The water readily combines

So here's some more article quotes lol > Ulm and his team mixed a small percent of carbon black with cement powder and added water. The water readily combines with the cement. But because the particles of carbon black repel water, they tend to clump together, forming long interconnected tendrils within the hardening cement that act like a network of wires. > Ulm and his colleagues cut this wired cement into small plates, creating supercapacitors 1 millimeter thick and 1 centimeter wide, about the size of a button. After adding a membrane, an electrolyte made from potassium chloride—a simple salt—and water, the researchers sealed the sandwich structure. When they then connected a wire to the plates and flipped a switch, cement supercapacitors lit up a series of LED lights. > To succeed, researchers will need to scale up the button-size plates. Doing that isn’t trivial, Nguyen notes. As supercapacitors get larger their electrical conductivity typically declines, making it harder to inject and extract energy from them. One solution, Ulm notes, is to simply add more carbon black to the mix—but not so much that it weakens the structural integrity of the cement. For structural concrete, the researchers found they could add up to 10% carbon black without compromising too much of its strength. Ulm says the group has patented its technology and is now working to scale it up to match the output of a 12-volt car battery. They are well aware of the concept of structural integrity and of course the big challenge is scaling up their idea in a way that does not compromise it.