Don’t get me wrong, I love the increased power I get when I upgrade my smartphone to one with newer hardware, but I’d be more than happy to upgrade to a smartphone with the same exact specs if it had a larger battery. Smartphones are constantly getting more powerful, but the batteries in them remain more-or-less the same. That’s why its so exciting to hear that researchers at Samsung have developed a new technology that can potentially double the battery capacity of our smartphones.
Researchers at Samsung Electronics announced yesterday that they have developed a new technology to produce a silicon cathode material that coats Graphene onto a silicon surface for higher energy density. In other words, Samsung has found a way to almost double the capacity of lithium batteries, which are used to power smartphones and various other gadgets. As I’m sure you’re aware, smartphone battery capacity has increased slightly over the last decade, but the technology remains limited by the physical size of gadgets and the limitations of the actual materials inside the battery. As we can’t make batteries any bigger, increases in raw capacity are needed, and researchers have been looking to new materials to find the solution. This is where Samsung’s research comes in. The company has come up with a new coating method for battery cathodes, which overcomes the cycling performance and capacity limitations imposed by current implementations. The new process makes use of that excellent conductive material known as Graphene, which is grown directly onto the silicon coating surface without silicon carbide formation. If this sounds familiar, other groups in the US have been attempting similar ideas.
