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Samsung Nanotech Breakthrough Nearly Doubles Li-Ion Battery Capacity

Posted by timothy on from the don't-worry-phone-makers-will-keep-up dept.

The Korea Times reports that Samsung researchers have published in Nature Communications the results of research (here's the abstract) that could lead to vastly greater storage capacity for lithium-ion batteries. The researchers, by growing graphene on silicon anodes, were able to preserve the shape of the anodes, an outcome which has formerly eluded battery designers: silicon tends to deform over numerous charging cycles. From the linked abstract: Here we report direct graphene growth over silicon nanoparticles without silicon carbide formation. The graphene layers anchored onto the silicon surface accommodate the volume expansion of silicon via a sliding process between adjacent graphene layers. When paired with a commercial lithium cobalt oxide cathode, the silicon carbide-free graphene coating allows the full cell to reach volumetric energy densities of 972 and 700Whl1 at first and 200th cycle, respectively, 1.8 and 1.5 times higher than those of current commercial lithium-ion batteries. Also at ZDNet.

6 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Now Li-Ion batteries can burn 1.5 to 1.8x longer by JoeyRox · · Score: 5, Funny

    For those cozy nights by the fire.

  2. And to think they'll misuse that by obarthelemy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    to make half as thick phones, instead of phones that last twice as long...

    --
    The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
    1. Re:And to think they'll misuse that by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 5, Funny

      I won't be satisfied with my phone until I can shave with it.

    2. Re:And to think they'll misuse that by mlts · · Score: 4, Informative

      I had a HTC Wizard, with its dual-core TI OMAP puttering along at 200 MHz. Doesn't sound like much, but it did well with calls, and could run a week without having to be charged. This was about a decade ago. Now, most of my smartphones won't persist beyond 24 hours unless I have them plugged into an external battery, or like my HTC One M8, enable the extreme battery saving mode, which replaces the Android Launcher default, disables Wi-Fi, and cellular communication, and only runs the absolute minimum of processes. This probably would make the phone's battery last a week, maybe more.

      I sort of wish the philosophy behind apps wasn't "lets make these as fast as a gaming computer or console", but the old PalmOS philosophy of "do the job done right, and if it doesn't need CPU cycles, don't do it." Because of demand for ever faster CPUs and GPUs, phones have to get bigger and bigger for heat dissipation reasons. It would be nice for CPU speed to lag a bit to allow for a better battery life, perhaps adding deeper caches. Adding more RAM to a phone might help things as well. This way, phone shape can be dictated by what users want, not having to have ever larger surfaces for engineering reasons.

  3. Re:well then by Rei · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Top commercial li-ion capacities are about 30% more than they were 5 years ago. And today's batteries include some of the "advances" you were reading about 5 years ago.

    I'm sorry if technology doesn't move forward at the pace you want. But it does move forward when you're not looking. Remember the size of cell phone batteries back in the day?

    --
    Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
  4. Re:well then by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 5, Insightful

    yet nothing trickles down at a great rate

    By definition.