4. Conclusion

While technological advances over the years have reduced the size and power consumption of electronic components, electrical energy storage devices have not followed this trend towards miniaturization, and have gained very little in efficiency. Despite their low energy density, microsupercapacitors have many advantages over microbatteries. However, their development is still only at the university research stage (LAAS-CNRS, IEMN, IMN, CIRIMAT, Drexel University, University of California...) and many challenges remain to be overcome in order to obtain high-performance components dedicated to embedded systems such as autonomous communicating sensor networks.

Numerous electrode materials deposited as thin films in microdevices via different technological pathways have been evaluated, and have led to a clear improvement in the amount of energy that can be stored on...