Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Deep-Frying Graphene Microspheres For Energy Storage

Posted by samzenpus on from the served-with-a-side-of-ranch dept.

ckwu writes Materials scientists have constructed round, pom-pom-like graphene microparticles by spraying graphene oxide droplets into a hot solvent—a process akin to deep-frying. The technique could provide a simple, versatile means to make electrode materials for batteries and supercapacitors, possibly leading to devices with improved energy and power densities, the researchers say. The microparticles contain graphene nanosheets radiating out from their centers, which increases the exposed surface area of the graphene and creates open nanochannels that can enhance charge transfer. Electrodes made with the graphene microspheres had higher capacitance than those made with unassembled graphene sheets, demonstrating that the 3-D structure of the particles improved performance.

49 comments

  1. Mmmm.. by Travis+Mansbridge · · Score: 5, Funny

    Proof that everything is better when deep fried.

    1. Re:Mmmm.. by Thanshin · · Score: 4, Funny

      Also proof that everything deep fried helps with energy storage.

    2. Re:Mmmm.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Everything except dentics.

    3. Re:Mmmm.. by turkeydance · · Score: 3, Funny

      Coming Soon to a State Fair near You!

    4. Re:Mmmm.. by GrumpySteen · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Deep frying is the only way you can eat a dentic, so it does make it better.

    5. Re:Mmmm.. by LeadSongDog · · Score: 1

      Deep fried durian, anyone? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
    6. Re:Mmmm.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (Score:2, Insightful), really? Crichton did not eat the fried dentic. It tasted so bad he spat it out immediately. Mods never ever watched Farscape? They just mod up things with sci-fi-ish links?

      Well fuck me, GAYNIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE is a sci-fi movie! Up mod this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ncwCETyQlk

  2. Should have been obvious by nonsequitor · · Score: 2

    I mean, look at the energy density of an Arancini.

    1. Re:Should have been obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Eat enough Arancini and you too will store lots of energy...as fat.

  3. Science, not a product by ledow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yet to see a graphene product in the wild.

    Until then, this is interesting science research and nothing more.

    Has been the same for, what, 11 years now?

    The Wiki says: "While as of 2014, graphene is not used in commercial applications, many have been proposed and/or are under development, in areas including electronics, biological engineering, filtration, lightweight/strong composite materials, photovoltaics and energy storage.... adhesive, elastomer, oil and aqueous and non-aqueous solutions... advanced composites, paints and coatings, lubricants, oils and functional fluids, capacitors and batteries, thermal management applications, display materials and packaging, inks and 3D-printersâ(TM) materials, and barriers and films."

    Stop making promises. Start making a single, viable product from it. At the moment, I have more products dependent on quantum interactions and radiation than I do on a substance we're told can be produced by pulling a strip of sellotape off a block of graphite.

    1. Re:Science, not a product by Thanshin · · Score: 1

      Has been the same for, what, 11 years now?

      [...]

      At the moment, I have more products dependent on quantum interactions and radiation

      And, as we all know, quantum physics were developed way later than... 2004.

    2. Re:Science, not a product by Required+Snark · · Score: 2
      Graphene is like affordable solar cell energy. It takes a long, long time to get started, and it seems that it's always five to ten years off, and then "suddenly" it has a major impact. Let's face it, the low hanging fruit, like transistors, has all been exploited. And even transistors had their begging in the 1930s with research at places like Bell Labs.

      Introducing fundamental technology takes decades of incremental improvements and theoretical discovery. If you are looking for instant gratification perhaps you should shift your focus to web startups or multi-level marketing schemes. Things like graphene require a long attention span and lots of dedicated work. That doesn't seem to fit with your attitude.

      --
      Why is Snark Required?
    3. Re:Science, not a product by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yet to see a graphene product in the wild.

      It's only what, the most expensive material on the planet? How big is your wallet?

    4. Re:Science, not a product by ledow · · Score: 0

      Quantum physics was entirely theoretical and not tied to any particular material, nor did it ever claim to. Like relativity, it took nearly a hundred years to PROVE that it was anything more than an hypothesis. And - in the last decade or so - its effects have to be countered in every high-end integrated circuit in the world.

      This is a discussion of a material, one we can make, one which is produced all over the world (quite easily, comparatively), which is making lots of very SPECIFIC materials-based promises, and yet producing nothing out of them. We can make it, we can study it, we can combine it, we can test it, we can claim it does all these things but NOT ONCE has someone shown that it could ever been actually useful.

      Hell, even the materials safety data sheets don't exist. We don't even know if this stuff is toxic yet. This could easily be another asbestos in the making. But yet people continue to make SPECIFIC, materials-based claims based on a substance they are holding in their hands and can see with their eyes.

      It's a whole different ball game.

    5. Re:Science, not a product by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Like relativity, it took nearly a hundred years to PROVE that it was anything more than an hypothesis.

      Relativity? 3 years from prediction to observation (1916 to 1919). 3100.

    6. Re:Science, not a product by LordWabbit2 · · Score: 1

      And in ten years after it has migrated into all of those products they will discover it causes cancer, and deformities in babies. Like the wonder material asbestos before it.

      --
      There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
    7. Re:Science, not a product by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yet to see a graphene product in the wild.

      Until then, this is interesting science research and nothing more.

      Has been the same for, what, 11 years now?

      What is your point? Should Slashdot not link to articles related to LHC just because you can't buy a particle accelerator at wall-mart or what are you getting at?

    8. Re:Science, not a product by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, because it only took 11 years from the discovery of magnets to their practical application. Wait, was it 11 years, or 11000 years?

    9. Re:Science, not a product by pigiron · · Score: 1

      "this is interesting science research and nothing more."

      This is not science; it is engineering.

    10. Re: Science, not a product by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Radiation has been under scientific inquiry for a hundred years. What products do you own that use quantum entanglements?

    11. Re:Science, not a product by h4x0t · · Score: 1

      Are you kidding? I'm pretty sure I could get both a high performance tennis racket and a pair of skis that contain graphene! /s

    12. Re:Science, not a product by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, I think it's been established carbon nanotubes totally screws up organic materials. When you have a tube that's about as tiny as it can be and it's super-strong relative to it's size, you basically have a spear. The only way it'd be smart to release this technology is to find a way to force people to recycle these things when they don't want them anymore. Maybe vouchers that you buy when you purchase the product, and you have to return the product with the voucher to get your money back. If you sell it on to someone else, just sell the voucher as well, I mean it's not like the price of the voucher is going to go down. It might even follow inflation so people are less tempted to throw away super old nanotube electronics.

  4. Could Possibly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Graphene seems always to be at a point where it "could" "possibly" be used for something. Has graphene actually been used for anything yet (beyond generating Slashdot articles)?

  5. The ultrasonic nozzles in the TFA... by Two99Point80 · · Score: 1

    ...seem like they might enhance fuel injection for IC engines as well. Hope somebody is looking into that...

    1. Re:The ultrasonic nozzles in the TFA... by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 1

      I remember experimental ultrasonic vapor carburetors (Edelbrock IIRC) from the late 70's. Don't know why they never saw mass production, seemed like a great idea, simple and effective.

    2. Re:The ultrasonic nozzles in the TFA... by confused+one · · Score: 1

      piezo electric's are already being used in fuel injectors

    3. Re:The ultrasonic nozzles in the TFA... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I can't find anything on that, all I can find is some carburetor systems that use sonics to add water to the intake charge, which is also a really great idea. It would be astoundingly easy to add to an intake system, and on a diesel it sounds like a very good idea. Not so sure about gassers, I think it would take more management to do well there.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:The ultrasonic nozzles in the TFA... by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Street car carbs were more or less done by the early 80s. All that was left was computer controlled carbs, which sucked.

      At operating temperatures the gasoline is typically well vaporized by the time the mix goes into the cylinder, so it only fixed a warmup issue, when motors are typically run a little rich anyhow.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  6. Finally, we're perfecting the carbon battery! by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 3, Funny

    Glad to see the potential for a new revolution in electronics. Assembling precise crystalline structures is the best way to harness properties of any material. For the most part we have been in the first generation of materials innovation, just one step removed from alchemy, where chemicals' properties are known in a general sense. Elements are combined and set into clumps of useful stuff.

    The two prevalent forms of stuff-clumps used in electronics have been the cowpie, a dollop of stuff placed into container in which electrodes or plates are suspended to yield useful properties of storage or electron transfer, perhaps selectively doped to generallly control the dance of the little electrons in their shells... and the turd, an extruded mass of stuff in which its length or composition determines the property, and electrodes are fixed to either end.

    1. harness the properties of useful stuff as cowpies and turds
    2. fine-tune the diet to maximize useful properties in turds (present level of technology)
    3. flocculate the turd juice into tiny turdlets (the innovation described in TA)
    4. assemble lattices of turdlets via electrostatic or acoustic means (think phi and eye of dragonfly)
    5. bit by bit assembly, such art as has been mastered by the Steelypips,

    "Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ..."
    ~~Stanislaw Lem

    Of course, a few of the folks here are going to go on to suggest that this process will some day become giant disposable batteries the size of skyscrapers that are built and lovingly installed like 2001: Monoliths, for the express purpose of storing a year's worth of solar and wind grid energy so that if the clouds roll over and the wind dies down, it will power our modern civilization for ten minutes. At which point I will lose my temper.

    --
    <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
    1. Re:Finally, we're perfecting the carbon battery! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, you don't know much about ICs are made, do you?

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?f...

      Now read that again.

      " For the most part we have been in the first generation of materials innovation, just one step removed from alchemy"

      Feel silly? You should. Put down that K. Eric Drexler nonsense and wake up.

    2. Re:Finally, we're perfecting the carbon battery! by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Wow, you don't know much about ICs are made, do you?

      We grow a lovely great crystal, then expensively slice it into bits, then we grow some more layers on it, and then we slice it up some more. If only we could just grow the crystal with three-dimensional circuitry embedded inside of it as it grows in the first place, and not have to cut it, imagine how much more efficient and powerful the whole process would be. Ma nature must sometimes make circuits by accident, just as she sometimes makes nuclear reactors, but we imagine having more purpose.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:Finally, we're perfecting the carbon battery! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks for the Stanislaw Lem quote -- made my day!

    4. Re:Finally, we're perfecting the carbon battery! by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 1

      Wow, you don't know much about ICs are made, do you?
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?f...
      Now read that again.
      "For the most part we have been in the first generation of materials innovation, just one step removed from alchemy"
      Feel silly? You should. Put down that K. Eric Drexler nonsense and wake up.

      That Todd Fernandez HOPE09 talk on IC manufacture is AWESOME, thanks!! Yes, I feel silly. That shit is indeed indistinguishable from magick.

      But because I am incorrigible and dislike car analogies, I will merely extend my bathroom analogy.

      1. harness the properties of useful stuff as cowpies and turds
      2. fine-tune the diet to maximize useful properties in turds
      2.5 fart on silicon wafers (Atomic Layer Deposition) and poke it onto the surface with photons to make useful patterns (present level of technology)
      2.6 Discover more delicate ways to fart and more pokey ways to poke.       [...]

      IC manufacture will always be about aggregation of functional component layers with successively higher and more conceptual function layers, and 2D lithography is a great way to do it. But the closest Fernandez comes to envisioning the Steelypips is during the QA after the lecture, when he is asked about the future of FIB (Focused Ion Beam) technology and more specifically Electron beam-induced deposition... with its ~0.045nm focus and the ability to deposit ~0.7nm Dippin' Dots, would make it the pokiest way to poke. But most exciting, the possibility to build out in three-dimensions.

      But the article is not so concerned with these high level structures, it's firmly at the poop level, a challenges of materials science to improve the desirable properties of graphene to produce turds with more carbon surface area. Better cowpies make better batteries.

      To do this you refine the traditional methods of simply incorporating naturally occurring granules of carbon into your poop, which is analogous to the consumption of corn, to a better one where the bonds form structures like dandelion seeds so that the same mass has more surface area.

      The superior area:mass ratio is what allows dandelion seeds to float, and mixed materials more chemically reactive. This makes the same volume of poop poopier, it's like turning poop inside out from a lump into a poop flower. That is indistinguishable from magic too -- if you were a classical chemist from the age of alchemy, unaware that your dumps were full of clumps, you'd think this was some kind of amazing Poop-TARDIS.

      The Steelypips I envision in GP can maneuver an individual atom into place, stand back and examine their work (a form of electron tunneling that does not destroy the specimen) and decide, "let's put it there instead."

      A feat analogous to bending over and farting out a candle across the stage. To this day it is always done with trickery.

      --
      <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
    5. Re: Finally, we're perfecting the carbon battery! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The superior area:mass ratio is what allows dandelion seeds to float, and mixed materials more chemically reactive. This makes the same volume of poop poopier, it's like turning poop inside out from a lump into a poop flower."

      Are you saying you mean to build poopcorn? Intriguing...

  7. Fun with font rendering! by damn_registrars · · Score: 1

    Did anyone else see that as "PORN-PORN" instead of "POM-POM"? Not easy to distinguish in the lower case...

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:Fun with font rendering! by Muad'Dave · · Score: 1

      Yes, I admit it.

      --
      Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
    2. Re:Fun with font rendering! by gregor-e · · Score: 1

      Worse, at least for those of us with a pedantic streak, is that the correct term is "pompon", one m, one n, not hyphenated.

  8. Memes by confused+one · · Score: 1

    Would you like fries with that?

    Would you like butter on your popcorn?

    I bet they'll get a charge out of that.

    In Soviet Russia graphene makes pom-poms of you

    So many options... so little time... I have to go to work now.

  9. "Do you want graphene microspheres with that?" by Fear+the+Clam · · Score: 4, Funny

    --Cruel teasing of STEM graduates' prospects from a land where liberal arts majors rule.

  10. Obvious next step by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hmmmmm, deep frying.

    Now imagine that with a Beowulf cluster of bacon.

  11. I did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Otherwise, I wouldn't be here reading the comments.
    OK, back to work then.

  12. Homer by nickname100 · · Score: 1

    Deep-friend graphene....gahhhhhhhhhh!

  13. Oh goody, another graphene article by buckfeta2014 · · Score: 0

    Either shit or get off the pot, guys. I'm tired of hearing research with no viable end product to back it up.

    --
    Buck Feta. You know what to do.
    1. Re:Oh goody, another graphene article by Sardaukar86 · · Score: 1

      Either shit or get off the pot, guys.

      Smelly. The alternative is similarly unattractive as it may induce withdrawal. Better they just get on with graphene research instead.

      --
      ..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
  14. "graphene oxide" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Isn't that, like, CO2?

  15. Another first for Scottish science! by jolyonr · · Score: 1

    Sorry :)

    --


    Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
  16. Power density? by pr100 · · Score: 1

    Is power density typically an issue?

  17. Re:Graphineification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you are looking for instant gratification perhaps you should shift your focus to web startups or multi-level marketing schemes.

    I was expecting instant ... Graphineification actually.