Samsung: doubles the capacity of lithium-ion batteries
Samsung is working with research centers and universities in South Korea to improve lithium-ion batteries, and it seems they have managed to find a new way to double their capacity, which could be brought to market very soon.
Researchers have turned their attention back to silicon (used in chips, processors, etc.) after solving the material's biggest problem. It has been known for many years that silicon could be used to store energy because of its atomic structure, but the idea didn't take off because it changes size during charge-discharge cycles. Therefore, it couldn't be used in batteries placed in small electronic devices.
However, Samsung and its partners managed to do it by coating thin graphene films with silicon nanoparticles, which take advantage of graphene's excellent electrical and mechanical properties and can expand or contract when needed. In this way, Samsung observed a 1.8x increase in capacity, while it dropped to 1.5x after 200 charge cycles.
Source: techgear.gr
