The race to bring fast charging to the mobile phone market through new battery developments reached a new peak last week with Samsung and relative newcomer Enervate using consumer electronic marketing and hype to bring their products to the global stage.
Enervate, the Irvine California developer of a silicon anode based battery system, was chosen by the gargantuan Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show which takes place in early January as an ‘honouree’ in three categories — Vehicle Intelligence & Self-Driving Technology, Eco-Design and Sustainable Technologies, and Tech for a Better World — for its “groundbreaking” silicon-dominant lithium-ion battery technology.
Within days, Samsung’s Advanced Institute of Technology claimed to have created a ‘graphene ball’, which can move electrons through it 140 times faster than silicon. A smartphone battery using a graphene anode essentially hexagonal lattice of carbon atoms, could potentially charge in 12 minutes as opposed to the hour or more that current lithium-ion batteries take to charge up.
According to a report in the Financial Times, Kim Young-woo at SK Securities said, “Graphene is a great technology with various potential applications but it will take a long time for graphene-based batteries to be mass produced… The key is who can commercialise the technology first. It won’t be easy to apply the minute processing technology for large-scale production of high-quality, electronics-grade graphene.”
