In the August issue of the Institute of Physics' monthly publication, a special supplement covers the latest developments in vacuum technology.
Among them is the work being done on supercapacitors, using UHV science to enable processing of the semiconductors.
John Chmiola writes: "UHV science has made semiconductor processing possible and could play a crucial role in making new energy-storage devices.
"Indeed, the lack of UHV utilisation in the energy-storage industry could be hindering the sector's development."
He adds that vacuum technology currently plays a relatively small role in energy-storage device manufacture, such as its application in vacuum-drying electrodes.
In order to achieve more widespread uptake of the technology, however, Mr Chmiola notes that there are some obstacles which must be overcome.
These include the common belief that, as semiconductors are typically used for miniaturisation, they may be less applicable to batteries, which generally need to be a certain physical size in order to store the desired amount of energy.
