New Design Trims Graphene Battery Size by 10x
February 04, 2015A Korean research team has developed a way to a make a graphene battery that is 10 times smaller than existing models.
The research team, headed by Park Ho-seok, professor of the School of Chemical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University, developed a way to make a sponge-like electrode material using graphene and a polymer, by combining polyvinyl alcohol and graphene.
The team developed this material after inducing a chemical reaction between polyvinyl alcohol and graphene in a state of solution. The aerogel material that makes up the battery is called the “lightest solid”, with an estimated 90-99.9% of it composed of air and pores smaller than 100 nanometers forming a 3D web.
Despite being 10 times smaller, the graphene battery had similar performance to that of existing graphene batteries and was able to maintain the same product performance after it went through the compression and restoration process more than 10 million times.
The graphene aerogel is expected to be used in the energy storage equipment of electric cars, space ships and mobile devices.
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