Surely you have ever heard that graphene batteries They are described as the future of batteries. Not only because of its duration and its characteristics, but because it has different potential uses that will help to improve all the technology. Graphene is nothing more than a sheet of pure carbon only one atom thick and is distributed in a regular hexagonal pattern. With this material you can build batteries with much more durability than those we know of lithium.
We are going to explain what graphene batteries are and what are the advantages over the rest of the batteries that we know today.
What are graphene batteries
This material is 100 times stronger than steel. The density it has is very similar to carbon fiber. The advantage it has over her is that it weighs 5 times less than aluminum. It has a two-dimensional crystal with unique properties that makes it easy to synthesize in different ways. This makes it easily adaptable to different situations and molds where to insert them to work in various electronic devices.
Graphene batteries are those that promise a longer life, better performance and a lower price. They also stand out for suffering less impact over time, which is why they have a much longer useful life than normal.
Among its main characteristics we can say that they are a modern alternative in ecological terms that promises an ideal solution to optimize the use of energy and electronic devices. These batteries are still in full development to be able to present a final version. If we analyze it from an ecological point of view, it will help us reduce environmental impacts since they are more powerful, efficient batteries with a longer useful life in time. By having a longer service life It will help us reduce the amount of raw materials we use in our products. In this way, we will not have to replace the batteries so quickly.
The advantage they offer over other common batteries is that they allow working at higher temperatures, making it a perfect solution to improve the useful life of electric car batteries. This adds an additional advantage of making the electric car not charging all night since it has enough capacity so as not to waste energy during the journey.
In terms of cost, they offer various possibilities for a fairly competitive price in the market. They are even cheaper than other common batteries that we find today in the markets. If we analyze the advantage they offer of making you need to charge the electric vehicle at night, we see that in the long term it represents quite significant savings.
Graphene battery applications
We are going to analyze the different applications that we can have with this type of battery:
- Mobile devices: It is one of the most important applications that can be given to this type of battery. With the improvement of the performance of mobile operating systems and the quality of the screen, the battery life is reduced. Therefore, the development of graphene batteries to increase the battery life of a mobile phone can be a great option to compete in the market. This is not only aimed at mobile phones but also tablets and other electronic devices.
- Watches: the evolution of smartwatchs make it necessary to have a longer battery life so that performance is benefited.
- Bracelets, headphones and gadgets: one of the advantages that graphene offers as a high-performance material is that its small size means that it can be adapted to all types of places, so it fits in a range of varieties of gadgets.
- Electric vehicles: Due to its characteristics, power could be increased and there would be more durability so that energy could be used to the maximum and costs could be reduced.
Advantages and disadvantages
We are going to analyze the main advantages that the use of this type of batteries can entail. As a curiosity, we will say that this type of material is not recent. It has been known since 1930 but investigations were discontinued as it was unstable material. Later in 2004 he was reworked with it and has been classified as the stuff of the future.
These are its advantages:
- Graphene has multiple properties such as be transparent, elastic, flexible and easy to carry for carrying out all kinds of applications.
- Its hardness is high. A has a hardness 100 greater than that of steel despite being elastic and flexible.
- It is capable of conducting electricity and temperature so its uses can be very wide.
- With a graphene battery It is estimated that the battery of a mobile phone could be charged in as little as 5 minutes.
- It could be used as a medicine against cancer.
As we can think, not everything is advantages. There are also some drawbacks such as:
- We are not talking about a magic material. Although researchers are trying to figure out what all the potentials of graphene are, it must be said that not all of them make the most of it in practice. This is the reason why there are still commercial applications with this material.
- Commercial applications. Although there are more than 60.000 scientific articles that study graphene, there are still no products with this class of material.
And it is that these batteries can be qualified without fear of being wrong that it is the material of the future. Every time you want to make it present in various products to achieve that efficiency of the optimal use of energy, durability, useful life and the potential uses it has.
It is being said that lithium batteries already have their days numbered. This new technology will improve all the benefits, which will make by setting the user to have greater autonomy and reliability.
Hopefully we can soon enjoy the efficiency of graphene batteries.