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Fnord666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

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 [digitaltrends.com] to detecting cancer [digitaltrends.com], this time putting it to work inside lithium-ion batteries. Scientists created a "graphene ball [nature.com]" 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 [nature.com] 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/ [digitaltrends.com]

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