Samsung has revealed that it has developed a “graphene ball” technology made of graphene-silica that could potentially charge smart phones up to five times faster than current methods.
The new technology utilizes a special graphene coating inside of a regular li-ion cell, which shields the electrode surface from harmful side reactions and offers efficient conductive pathways. The graphene ball itself also acts as an anode material. To develop the technology, methane gas was fed into a furnace in the presence of silicon dioxide nanoparticles, in order to decompose the methane to generate hydrogen atoms, which in turn reduced the SiO2 to SiO x.
Samsung has published a report in Nature Communications that details the findings. The technology is still in its infancy and therefore likely will not appear in upcoming phones such as the Galaxy S9 or iPhone 11, but it holds the potential to charge future phones in, say, 18 minutes rather than 90 minutes.
