Watt Laboratories, a company under Huawei Central Research Institute, has unveiled graphene based li-ion batteries that last longer than conventional ones.
Li-ion Batteries
What you have in your smartphones and laptops is in fact a Li-ion battery which typically lasts 2-3 years at most. After that you either need to replace the laptop/smartphone or replace the battery.
Graphene Assisted Li-ion Battery
This new battery can work at a peak high temperature of 60 degrees Celsius which is about 10 degrees higher than ordinary Li-ion batteries.
Its makers say that the graphene battery can last twice as long as a regular battery. Additionally, the new batteries run cooler than the ordinary ones which could be a reason why they last longer as well.
Heat usually decreases a battery’s life so this is good news.
Dr. Yangxing Li, who is a chief scientist at the Watt Laboratories, said,
The tests show that when working parameters are the same, the graphene-assisted high-temperature Li-ion battery is 5°C cooler than ordinary Li-ion batteries. Over 70% of the graphene battery’s capacity is left after it is recharged 2,000 times at a temperature of 60°C. Less than 13% of its capacity is lost after being kept in a 60°C environment for 200 days.
Useful in Pakistan
It would be very useful in high temperature areas like Pakistan especially in summers. The temperature always goes higher than 40 degrees in summers and using a smartphone in this kind of heat negatively impacts the batteries.
If the graphene batteries turn out to be as good as they are claimed to be, we could see wide scale adoption in smartphones at least.
Other battery technology is often announced with claims making it sound like a revolution in battery or charging technology. Unlike those announcements, this comes from a big name manufacturer like Huawei so the hope is that this technology may see large scale production soon.
Huawei introduced a new fast charging technology back in 2015 which is able to charge a 3,000 mAh battery up to 48% in just 5 minutes. Rumors indicate that the company will introduce this new fast charging tech this month as well.
