Zinc Microcapacitors Are the Best of Both Worlds

What's wrong with C0G?

Very low dielectric constant, so low capacitance for a given size[1].

It also seema these devices are more 2D than 3D so surface area matters more than volume[2].

[1]: https://blog.knowlescapacitors.com/blog/capacitor-fundamenta...

[2]: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsomega.2c07549

Sounds like a good match for sensor nodes where energy harvesting may be slow and consumption is intermittent. You don't need massive energy capacity, but you need good power density to support transmit bursts, and you need very high cycle durability.

They are not even the same kind of component.

If you try to make an integrator out of this thing, you'll have a very bad time.

Why Zinc if Carbon is sufficient?

From "Eco-friendly artificial muscle fibers can produce and store energy" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42942421 :

> "Giant nanomechanical energy storage capacity in twisted single-walled carbon nanotube ropes" (2024) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-024-01645-x :

>> 583 Wh/kg

That's with mechanical twisting though; graphene supercapacitors in general have lower energy density than (micro-) capacitors?

Yeah, as long as self-discharge/leakage rates are acceptable, there are a lot of use cases for this middle ground tech.