Back Cover: Superior electric storage in de‐alloyed and anodic oxidized Ti–Ni–Si glassy alloy ribbons (Phys. Status Solidi RRL 7/2013)

Supercapacitor: Mikio Fukuhara et al. (see pp. 477–480) discovered Ti–Ni–Si glassy alloy supercapacitors that can store electric charge on TiO2 surfaces that contain many nanometer-sized cavities. In contrast to the traditional electrochemical reactions, the supercapacitors do not require solutions with ions but directly charge/discharge electrons in wide temperature (∼193–453 K) and voltage (∼200 V) regions under DC and AC applications. The device consists in a distributed constant equivalent circuit of R and C. The cover picture shows de-alloyed and anodic oxidized amorphous TiO2 surface, where canyons of ca. 7 nm in size with higher work functions, Φ, of 5.53 eV can directly store electrons. Further gains could be attained with surface optimization.