

Graphene improves lithium-ion battery capacity and recharge rate by 10x - mrsebastian
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/105343-graphene-improves-lithium-ion-battery-capacity-and-recharge-rate-by-10x

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jws
_… 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 optimistic for something that is fabricated at the
atomic level.

What exists on the market now that is designed at the atomic level and mass
produced?

~~~
lini
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.

~~~
KaeseEs
No they don't. Degradation of lithium-ion batteries is a function of
temperature, time since manufacture and charge level rather than
charge/discharge cycles. If you keep the battery cool and don't discharge it
below 20% or so, it will last a very long time. If you keep it hot and
constantly do full discharges, it will be dead very quickly.

~~~
onemoreact
You need to discharge them really slowly to if you want to keep them cool. So,
there is a link between discharging and temperature assuming a high power
device.

~~~
khafra
Liquid cooling for batteries wouldn't be worth it in earbuds, but it probably
would in an electric car.

~~~
dangrossman
Which is why battery packs in Tesla cars are liquid-cooled.

~~~
onemoreact
Tesla battery's still get hot, just not as hot as they would get with more
limited cooling.

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snewman
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?

~~~
dlikhten
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!

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planckscnst
I'd rather have 200 miles and lighter/cheaper(? at least in terms of
environmental costs) batteries.

~~~
MartinCron
Just as with gasoline-powered vehicles, I would like to have the choice of
many different options.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
Well, for energy storage and conversion in gasoline powered cars you only have
option. Gasoline stored in a tank and combusted in an Otto cycle engine.

I don't think that people's driving behaviour is divergent enough to support
multiple battery chemistries in the long run.

~~~
MartinCron
I was thinking I can choose between cars that have different capabilities
(small or large, big tank or small, fast or slow) even if the core tech is the
same.

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danmaz74
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.

~~~
Torn
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.

~~~
tsotha
You can't "sit on" patents. The whole point of the patent system is to get an
idea out there so people can use it. As a patent holder you're required to
license your invention for a reasonable amount (I'm not really sure how that's
determined - probably in court). If you don't, a judge can put your invention
in the public domain and give you nothing.

The stories you hear about the 300 mpg carburetor and machines that produce
power from the spin of electrons? These devices, if they actually existed,
would have to be bought and hidden away without ever entering the patent
system. And the buyer (oil companies, is it?) would have to take the chance
somebody else would patent the invention for which he paid millions.

~~~
nknight
Citation, please. I've never heard of compulsory licensing occurring in the US
outside of government contracts and anti-trust settlements.

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scythe
For the record, there are a _lot_ of experimental battery technologies out
there:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-
ion_battery#Variations_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-
ion_battery#Variations_in_materials_and_construction)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-sulfur_battery>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanowire_battery>

Just... one of these will probably catch on, yes, and that's awesome, but
we've come up with so many different ideas that at this point, demonstrating a
high-capacity lithium battery prototype is the Aristocrats joke of battery
science.

~~~
leoc
And the promised capacity increase is always 10x, neither more nor less.

~~~
scythe
Lithium-sulfur is an older, more well-studied technique, and it only promises
a 4x increase. There are still quite a few kinks to be worked out but I think
it has the best potential of the bunch for the near future.

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troymc
Here's the press release from Northwestern University:

[http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2011/11/batte...](http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2011/11/batteries-
energy-kung.html)

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

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.201100426/ab...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.201100426/abstract)

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Torn
Is there _anything_ graphene can't do?

~~~
knieveltech
So far: make it to market. But we're optimistic.

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wanorris
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._

~~~
smd80
But can you imagine trying to _find_ the charging cable for your Kindle after
a year?

~~~
mahyarm
If they keep it to a standard mini-USB cable, it won't be too bad.

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sycren
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...](http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/better-battery-
storage-0725.html)

~~~
aidenn0
Patience. It's usually a minimum of 5 years for tech to go from the lab to
commercial use, and often 10 years before it's in common use. Furthermore
since there are probably dozens of competing technologies currently in the lab
for energy storage, most of them won't ever make mainstream commercial use.

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pilom
So now the battery in my laptop will have 10x the energy in it when it
explodes. It will be even more like carrying a bomb around with you.

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mkramlich
not mentioned in the article, but this could be a huge help for electric cars,
and to the solar power industry.

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maeon3
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?

~~~
sounds
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.

~~~
JonnieCache
_> this should only be as safe as any other Lithium-ion or Lithium-polymer
battery._

So, they will explode fairly often then.

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lclaude01
From a symposium on Graphene at Mcgill earlier this year. One study presented
was Graphene/Metal contact

[http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~maassenj/aps/2011-March-
meetin...](http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~maassenj/aps/2011-March-
meeting/APS_2011.ppt.pdf)

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guimarin
I still don't understand why people think this will do anything for electric
cars. The bottleneck is how long it takes to charge your car. If you have a
60KW/hr pack, you can only charge it so fast with a 110v/20amp jack (for the
sake of pie in the sky projections assume 50% charging efficiency between
charger and battery). Period the end. you could always do 220v/30amps, or
208v/30amps/3phase. or 440v/1000amps. the tradeoff is in how many idiots
electrocute themselves. It never ceases to amaze me how people don't get this
simple simple fact. It's like saying that you can fill up a swimming pool
faster because you've made a sturdier garden hose.

~~~
ljlolel
That's pretty short-sighted Mike. First, a 10x battery boost would mean you
don't have to recharge the car fully over a week.

This is also a boon for battery swapping stations which are bein built in
Israel and other places.

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guimarin
lol. it's like you're trying to troll me. #5,612,606.

~~~
ljlolel
He's talking about this patent, by the way, which I know he made:
<http://www.patents.com/us-5612606.html>

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Dylan16807
But that patent's going to be expired by the time these batteries are ready.

~~~
Maxious
Shai Agassi's patent #7,993,155 for a charging connector even references this
one. Doesn't look like they consider it a problem.

