SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Samsung's Advanced Institute of Technology has come up with another use for graphene, a material that's part of many exciting future projects from purifying seawater to detecting cancer, this time putting it to work inside lithium-ion batteries. Scientists created a "graphene ball" coating for use inside a regular li-ion cell, which has the effect of increasing the overall capacity by up to 45 percent and speeding up charging by five times.
[...] Samsung's research team has published a long, very technical paper about how the graphene ball works, and how it's produced. It's clear the technology is at the very early stages, and isn't likely to be a major feature on the Galaxy S9 (or the iPhone 11 or any other device next year), but its potential to have an impact on future batteries inside Samsung and other phones is obvious. Who doesn't want a faster charging, longer-lasting battery inside their favorite device?
Li-ion batteries power not only our mobile gadgets, where fast charging is a extremely helpful, but they are also used in electric vehicles, where fast charging is essential for wider adoption. Samsung says it's possible the graphene ball technology can be scaled up from small capacity cells in our phones, to much larger batteries inside cars. The company has filed patents in the United States and South Korea for graphene ball technology, but there is no indication when or if it will reach a consumer product.
Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/samsung-graphene-ball-news/
(Score: 5, Informative) by KilroySmith on Wednesday November 29 2017, @09:27PM (4 children)
>>>Why do these things disappear and never come to market?
>>>Why wouldn't Tesla be all over this like yesterday?
As Elon Musk once noted:
Revolutionary LiIon battery improvements get announced weekly - but very few of them make it to production. This is just another one. For Tesla to jump all over it, it has to be better than their current battery chemistry on a lot of levels:
1. Power to Weight - They don't need battery packs to weigh twice as much
2. Power to Volume - They don't need battery packs to take up twice the room
3. Safety - They don't need cars that go up in flames
4. Longevity - Tesla's current batteries are showing 5-10% capacity loss after 100,000 miles. This is showing 22% loss after 500 cycles.
5. Cost - self-explanatory
6. Producibility - They have to be able to build them fast, with high yield.
7. Materials - Gotta be made out of stuff that's not in short supply
8. etc.
Lithium-Ion batteries have had a long history, and have had a lot of people looking at a lot of different ways to improve them for a lot of years. As a result, improvements aren't going to come easily. Some of the approaches that have been announced (like solid electrolytes) look very promising, and I'm sure that Tesla is experimenting with them.
I'd suggest a quick review of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_in_lithium-ion_batteries [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 29 2017, @10:17PM (3 children)
And in large quantity with low labor. It can't be like 1960 magnetic bubble memory that is extremely labor intensive for asian girls to thread tiny wires through tiny cores forming a fabric of woven cores.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday November 29 2017, @10:59PM
I'm guessing technology advances -- robotics, computer vision, trainable dust mites -- haven't helped address that particular manufacturing mode?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:32AM (1 child)
That was core memory. Bubble memory was something else. And core was made by American grannies.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 30 2017, @02:39PM
Yes, you are correct. I meant that. I can't believe I wrote that wrong without reading it carefully enough.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.