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Samsung Develops 'Graphene Ball' Battery With 5x Faster Charging Speed (digitaltrends.com)
Heart44 writes: A number of outlets are reporting a Samsung laboratory breakthrough allowing smaller and faster charging lithium-ion batteries using three-dimensional graphene. Digital Trends reports: "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. If your phone charges up in 90 minutes now, that number will tumble to just 18 minutes if the cell inside has been given a graphene ball boost. What's more, this doesn't seem to affect the cell's lifespan, with the team claiming that after 500 cycles, the enhanced battery still had a 78 percent charge retention. The graphene coating improves the stability and conductivity of the battery's cathode and electrode, so it's able to take the rigors of fast charging with fewer downsides." The technical paper describing how the graphene ball works and how it's produced is published in the journal Nature.
From TFA: "Each GB is composed of a SiO x nanoparticle center and surrounding graphene layers, constituting a three-dimensional (3D) popcorn-like structure." Buckyballs (or rather Buckminsterfullerene) is C60, consisting of 60 Carbon atoms in a ball-like structure. So, totally dissimilar.
Sig?
Buckballs are the entire family, Buckminsterfullerene is specifically C60 but the family contains C20 through C2160 (and probably larger).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
1) They'll just make the battery smaller, I'd guess. Why would a company whose job it is to sell hardware want that hardware to disrupt their product cycle (cynical, I know)?
2) DON'T charge you battery to 100% or discharge to near-zero. I don't have links, but there are some neat articles around the internet regarding the chemistry of li-ion batteries and charge/discharge. It's shown that charging to ~80% and discharging to only ~40% allows the battery to last far far longer; that's what I do, and so far it's working out very well.
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