Graphene research promises better smart-device batteries

Australian researchers have announced breakthroughs that could lead to smart-device batteries that last for weeks.

Smart watches such as Apple’s Watch often can’t survive a day without recharge

What have pieces of sticky tape, the stuff in pencils and a Nobel prize got to do with making your smartphone battery last for weeks?

Lots, actually. The ripple-down effect of this unusual trilogy of items has Australian researchers excited, after two universities released their latest research within a day of each other this week.

It is 11 years since Soviet-born physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov used adhesive tape to create tiny slabs of carbon as thin as a single atom by repeatedly applying tape to graphite, the stuff of pencils. The result was an incredibly strong yet flexible material capable of conducting electricity.

The rest is history. The pair, working in Britain at the University of Manchester, won the Nobel prize in Physics in 2010 and received knighthoods the following year.

The resultant material, graphene, cited as up to 300 times stronger than steel, has celebrity status. Newspaper business pages carry stories of high-profile investors funding graphite mining and boast of applications for this material in tyres, wheels, unbreakable touchscreens, as a water cleanser and for myriad uses in electronics.

That’s where your smartphone comes in. Today, limited battery life holds us back from having even slicker phones, tablets and wearables. It’s why most new phones don’t have incredible quad HD resolution displays. It’s why manufacturers tend not to install faster processors. These items churn through too much juice.

This problem casts a shadow over smart watches. They may look beautiful but often can’t survive a day without recharge. Even Apple’s popular Watch can struggle on heavier use days.

Researchers are looking for solutions. Samsung has patented a way of nearly doubling the capacity of lithium-ion batteries. Microsoft developed a workaround called WearDrive, which can pass a battery-intensive task from a watch to a wirelessly connected phone.

But the magic material graphene and in particular a derivative, graphene oxide, is coming to the rescue.

This week two universities announced advances in harnessing graphene to etch supercapacitors at nanotechnology level, creating incredibly small, powerful, flexible batteries that carry lots of energy and recharge quickly.

Part of the impetus is to radically improve batteries in electric cars. Increasing range and performance is one aim. Radically reducing the battery recharging time is another.

That’s why there’s excitement around news from Monash University and its private-sector partner Ionic Industries. They say they’ve used an ion beam to “write” on graphene, creating supercapacitors thinner than a human hair. No mean feat at near atomic level.

Ionic Industries chief executive Mark Muzzin says the first battery prototype should be available within six months and more sophisticated prototypes in three to five years.

Ionic is a spin-off of minerals explorer Strategic Energy Resources. Another spin-off, ­Valence Industries, owns a large graphite deposit in South Australia, which should help things along.

That announcement on Monday was followed on Tuesday by University of Wollongong’s Institute for Superconducting and Electronic Materials saying it had created a graphene-based compound that could fold like a roll or stack like a paper in electronic devices. This would allow it to store a huge amount of charge.

Researchers planned to develop these batteries for electric cars and received financial support for the Automotive Australia 2020 CRC. Now they see a huge future for these flexible batteries in wearables.

Wollongong’s Professor Gordon Wallace told The Australian that researchers already could create the battery prototypes by hand. The issue was developing a manufacturing process at nanotechnology level and Wollongong’s approach was to use 3D printing technology.

“We envisage printing processes will be used,” Professor Wallace said.

Research never happens in a vacuum, so there will be plenty of competition. Samsung, through its Advanced Institute of Technology, has developed a transistor structure using graphene.

The good news is that researchers are on the case of creating lightweight batteries containing vast amounts of charge. With much money to be made, a solution should be with us soon. And Australia is in with a chance.