Samsung develops new battery tech based on silicon, graphene

The one issue that marred the otherwise stellar Samsung Galaxy S6 was its paltry battery life, but it seems that the company responsible has quickly found a possible fix.

A Samsung-funded project has made an interesting breakthrough in silicon-based battery technology, which is said to result in up to 1.8-times the capacity of a similarly sized lithium-ion battery — the tech currently used in modern smartphones. After 200 charges, this only drops to 1.5-times, which is where the real improvement can be seen.

The thesis is a dense one, but the takeaway is simple.

Previous attempts at silicon-based batteries suffered from “large volume change” caused by constant discharge and charge cycles, but this technology overcomes this thanks to “graphene layers anchored onto the silicon surface.”

Read more: IBM: carbon nanotech coming soon to a phone near you

Graphene is often regarded as the sliced bread material in modern science, and as a structural variant of carbon, it has many uses across many spheres of manufacturing.  But it’s particularly useful, it seems, to get a misbehaving battery to settle down and hold a charge.

While we probably won’t see this technology in the next edition of the Samsung Galaxy though as it’s not ready to market at all, it’s definitely a step in the right direction for smartphone power storage.

If you haven’t had your daily dose of science jargon yet, you can read the entire thesis here.

Feature image: Kārlis Dambrāns via Flickr