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Graphene improves lithium-ion battery capacity and recharge rate by 10x

extremetech.com

11–20 of 74 posts

Re: Graphene improves lithium-ion battery capacity and recharge rate by 10x

#11
post #8

So how long do you reckon we will have to wait for something like this? I'm still waiting for lithium-air batteries from MIT http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/better-battery-storage-07...

Still waiting? It takes longer than four months to bring new technology from research to market. Put up some money for investing in manufacturing and maybe your complaint would be valid.

Re: Graphene improves lithium-ion battery capacity and recharge rate by 10x

#12
post #2

… store 10 times more power… …after 150 charge/discharge cycles, is also five times more effective than any lithium-ion battery currently on the market Is this the positive way of saying they lose half of their capacity after 150 cycles? Ten times capacity is certainly a game changer for everything from wireless ear buds to electric cars, but * week-long smartphone batteries within a couple of years* sounds optimisti…

Usual Li-Ion batteries get a bit over 1000 cycles, so if this is 10 times more power, it provides more power for 150 cycles than a normal Li-Ion for its lifetime.

Re: Graphene improves lithium-ion battery capacity and recharge rate by 10x

#14
post #9

This would be a real game changer for electric cars. Even a "mere" 3x enhancement would already make them really competitive with combustion engines ones, but with 10x they would just be better than our traditional cars. Let's hope this technology can be industrialized in an economic way.

It'll surely be patented and sat on for a while at a very high price. My bet is we'll need to wait $time_of_release + 10 years until we see things working out over traditional cars.

Re: Graphene improves lithium-ion battery capacity and recharge rate by 10x

#15
post #10

What is the safety of this battery? At 10x power we are looking at potential explosion for eletric cars instead of raging fire for gas cars... Does it work in 30 below zero?

As just a lay commenter on ycombinator, I can point out that they're just changing the anode atomic structure. They're not changing the Lithium salt.

So your concerns about safety are fine - this should only be as safe as any other Lithium-ion or Lithium-polymer battery.

Re: Graphene improves lithium-ion battery capacity and recharge rate by 10x

#16
post #5
post #4

Seems to me that if this proves out, and can be made affordably, the most exciting application would be electric cars -- no more range penalty vs. gasoline. Anyone know enough to comment on the likely applicability?

mmmm electric cars... 10x the range of current cars... thats what... cross country in one charge? can anyone argue with that? Ok fine 10x is not cross country... but it is 2000 miles per f-ing charge!

[deleted]

Re: Graphene improves lithium-ion battery capacity and recharge rate by 10x

#17
post #14
post #9

This would be a real game changer for electric cars. Even a "mere" 3x enhancement would already make them really competitive with combustion engines ones, but with 10x they would just be better than our traditional cars. Let's hope this technology can be industrialized in an economic way.

It'll surely be patented and sat on for a while at a very high price. My bet is we'll need to wait $time_of_release + 10 years until we see things working out over traditional cars.

It will be patented - yes. Sat on at a very high price - I don't think so. Even if you only think about maximizing profits, with a technology like this you would make much more money by creating a new market (mass produced electric cars) with lower margins and very big numbers than with high margins and very little numbers.

On the other hand, if the technology required to mass produce this kind of batteries will be too new, it could take time to scale it and bring costs down. Let's hope it isn't too innovative.

Re: Graphene improves lithium-ion battery capacity and recharge rate by 10x

#18
Here's the press release from Northwestern University:

http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2011/11/batte...

and the associated journal paper, published in Advanced Energy Materials:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.201100426/ab...

Re: Graphene improves lithium-ion battery capacity and recharge rate by 10x

#19
While this could change the game for electric cars (Edit: as others have already been discussing), it would also be an amazing advance for cell phones and computers. Imagine a cell phone that had a lighter battery but still lasted through a week of use between charges. Or an incredibly thin and light battery (and a correspondingly thin and light phone) that still lasted a couple of days.

Or a notebook that didn't need all the power management to dial down the CPU and GPU when unplugged, and could barrel away full speed and still last for a day or two. You'd still have to worry about heat dissipation, but there are plenty of fast notebooks that handle that fine when plugged in.

Or an iPad with the battery life of a Kindle. Or a Kindle that you charged once a year.

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