In the field of consumer electronics, the battery capacity and charging speed has always been the topic of eternity, many manufacturers have the charging time and battery capacity as a product gimmick.And look at the global electronic equipment market, has come out for many years the lithium battery is still this Absolute overlord in the field, almost all smartphones on the market have built-in this battery, and even Boeing 787 'Dreamliner' built a large number of lithium batteries.
However, the huge shortcomings of lithium batteries in terms of safety, endurance, environmental pollution and charging speed have begun to severely limit the development of major high-tech industries. Therefore, many enterprise R & D departments are turning their attention to the more advanced graphite (Graphene cell) above, and believe that this new battery will completely replace the future has come out more than 26 years of lithium batteries.
What is graphene battery?
Graphene is a planar thin film of hexagonal honeycomb cells with sp2 hybrid orbital from carbon atoms, which is a two-dimensional material with only one carbon atom thickness. Graphene is currently the thinnest but also the hardest nano in the world The material, which is almost completely transparent, absorbs only 2.3% of the light and is also the lowest resistivity material in the world.
The so-called graphene battery is the use of lithium-ion graphene in the surface and rapid large-scale shuttle between the characteristics of the electrode, developed a new energy battery as the thinnest, the most hard, the most conductive thermal conductivity of a new type The concept of nanomaterials and graphene has drawn much attention since its introduction in 2004.
In the field of power battery, for example, graphene is a positive and negative material for lithium-ion battery with good application prospect, meanwhile, the weight of graphene polymer battery is only 50% of the traditional battery, and the cost will be 77% lower than the lithium battery. Point of view, graphene rechargeable lithium battery, time-consuming no more than 10 minutes.
Due to its unique properties, graphene is called 'magical material' and scientists even predict it will 'revolutionize the 21st century'.
Ideal is beautiful
As we all know, the most widely used material in the field of smart phones is still the lithium battery, which was first commercialized in 1991 and later became the standard of electronic equipment.But many people think this technology has reached the limit, hoping to find alternative sources, so graphite Ene battery technology has entered the people's attention.
The current news shows that the next generation of Samsung's flagship Galaxy S9 models will use a graphene battery to replace the existing lithium batteries in the same volume of battery storage capacity of about 45% of lithium batteries, but can Fully charged in 12 minutes and is highly stable in environments up to 60 degrees Celsius, making this material battery not only ideal for smartphones but also for electric vehicles.
It is reported that, Samsung Institute has found a large-scale combination of graphene and silica method to complete the fusion of the material known as 'graphene ball' has a popcorn-like structure.The researchers pointed out that this technology both Improve the stability of the battery, but also improve the conductivity, 'greatly improve the cathode's recyclability and rapid charging capacity' More importantly, their energy density close to 800Wh / L, about the same as Tesla used Same as lithium-ion battery.
External analysts believe that if Samsung is the world's first successful graphene battery into mass production equipment manufacturers, it will make the South Korean enterprises for a long time become the sole supplier of graphene or patent holders, And that's a huge help to the company's revenue and global position.
In the meantime, the concept of 'graphene battery' has been repeatedly mentioned in the field of new energy vehicles and seems to be the breakthrough of battery technology for electric vehicles nowadays. Graphene technology is called 'landmark black technology' Extend the electric car mileage, battery life, while reducing charging time.
Perhaps most representative of these is the Fisker EMotion developed by Fisker founder Fisker EMotion, which will be powered by a new graphene battery material for nine minutes Driving 208 km, the maximum mileage reached 644 km, the maximum speed of 259 km / h.The car is expected in 2020, the first sale in the United Kingdom.
In addition, the domestic media reported that scientists at Zhejiang University recently used graphene membrane as a cathode material, developed a new type of aluminum - graphene battery. This battery life is extremely long, can be fully charged in a very short period of time, and at Minus 40 ℃ to 120 ℃ temperature range can work properly.
Moreover, the developed aluminum-graphene battery has some unmatched characteristics of other current batteries, such as low temperature to minus 40 ℃, aluminum-graphene battery can still charge and discharge stable 1000 times; high temperature to 100 ℃, stable Charge and discharge 45000 times, even if the cell is exposed to the flame will not fire or explosion.This wide temperature range for the future of aluminum-ion batteries under extreme temperature conditions laid the foundation.
In addition, the battery also has good flexibility, the capacity can still be unchanged after 10,000 kinks, showing the potential in the wearable flexible electronic devices.
The reality is very skinny
The current capital market has huge imagination space for graphene batteries. However, many scholars believe that graphene batteries are difficult to achieve in many aspects at present. Therefore, it is still a laboratory-generated product that is still in the foreseeable future.
Liu Guanwei, a senior engineer at Beijing Nonferrous Metal Research Institute and Tsinghua University doctor, said in an interview with the Daily Economic News that 'there is a disagreement on how to define a graphene battery first: the graphene material added to the electrode material is defined as a graphene battery There is misleading.About graphene battery news is limited to a number of fur reports, even the battery structure and reaction mechanism diagram are not, but also the lack of specific energy density, voltage, cycle life and other specific technical parameters.For the battery industry, Without such information, the coverage of the reported news lacks the most basic credibility and the possibility of false exaggeration is extremely high. '
Li Yongfeng, professor of China University of Petroleum, also held the same skepticism.He believes that the current application of graphene in the battery, mainly in combination with silicon inside the battery to replace the original graphite, which can improve the overall battery capacity and charging speed, but the performance Enhance the effect is limited, online rumors subversive upgrade is not realistic.In addition, there are insiders mentioned graphene surface characteristics of a great influence by the chemical state, batch stability, cycle life and other issues are more difficult to meet the meticulous production of lithium batteries Claim.
The report of CSC also shows that it is still unknown when graphene products with excellent properties can be walked out of the laboratory.For example, when graphene is used as a transparent conductive film, there is a bottleneck in the preparation of industrial products so that graphite Low conductivity of olefin crude oil can not play due to the single-layer graphene without band gap, the logic circuit can not achieve the necessary transistor switching function, a substantial increase in the complexity of the process, so its widespread use in the field of micro-electronics is yet to be .
It is true that graphene is considered as one of the most promising materials in the future, but for now, its foam composition is greater than its practical value. There are many factors hindering the popularity of this material, but mass production and cost are the most important The popularity of graphene batteries in order to completely replace the lithium battery in the short term may still have a long way to go.
