Samsung, the South Korean tech giant has successfully developed a technology that will enable it to double the capacity of lithium batteries effectively. In other words, the research team of Samsung Electronics has come up with a technology that basically involves the development of a silicon cathode material for the purpose of coating high crystal graphene on a silicon surface. In comparison to the existing current lithium batteries, this is said to double the energy density. Besides, Samsung has been making a lot of effort in order to better the battery technologies to distinguish itself from other global smartphone rivals, that will not only assist the company in its consumer electronics business but also the electric car industry. The current lithium batteries, which were manufactured and commercialized by Sony in the 90’s, has been developed in a way to broaden the capacity rather than increasing the density and life due to restrictions of material itself. The enlargement of capacity has continued to remain at best two times more than that of the first commercialized batteries. Currently, the United States leads the development of such high capacity battery. Mostly, the research is active where silicon is under study as a way of increasing capacity by more than 10 times instead of the graphite. Graphite is currently used as a cathode material. However, there is still a technological problem with this, the battery life always shortens after repeated charging and discharging. Well, thanks to the R&D center of Samsung Electronics that this problem has been taken care of as they have succeeded in designing a high-density and highly-durable cathode material by coating the strong and conductive graphene on the surface of the silicon. This afterwards makes a protective layer around it which then let’s the capacity to be doubled without reducing the life of the battery. The technology may need two or three years for commercialization say the industry watchers. Which means that the 2300 mAh to 3000 mAh range used today will be doubled in capacity by the year 2018 and let users breathe easy on the recharge. The research results were published in the online science journal Nature Communications.
