Another British Graphene Battery?

Another week, another British university that managed to combine graphene and lithium into a potentially disruptive innovation for the battery market. 

This time, it was at the University of Manchester, where a surprising interaction was found to take place between lithium and a super-thin anode just two carbon atoms thick. 

This anode, usually made of graphite, was fabricated of graphene and immediately offered a plethora of data to researchers that may guide future battery design. 

Thinner, more precisely manufactured anodes may result in smaller, more efficient, longer-lasting, more reliable batteries — all benefits characteristic of the graphene effect.

For those in the know, this is an exciting evolutionary step in the design of rechargeable batteries, but for the common onlooker following the graphene story, it may come off as a bit underwhelming.

Since first appearing in the public eye 20 years ago, no fewer than 150,000 graphene-based patents have been filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. 

In the previous decade, graphene received so much press most of us expected it to become as ubiquitous as plastic, with applications for all industries in all known environments, both terrestrial and extraterrestrial.

Why Our Graphene Reality Hasn’t Lived up to the Hype

Instead, what we got was a whole lot of nothing, as the future-looking world of the mid-2010s transformed into a society not strengthened by technology but threatened by it. 

Big hopes for the third decade of the new millennium dissipated with the coming of political turmoil, COVID, and war in Europe. 

All the while, the story of graphene faded out of our public consciousness. 

Of course, as things tend to happen, the hype wasn’t off by much.

Graphene’s destiny as plastic 2.0, as the next transformative material, is still quite likely… The only difference is that instead of happening 10 years ago, it’s happening right now. 

Evidence of this has been documented right here, in Energy in Capital, as almost every week we review more advancements in graphene tech. 

And no, these aren’t artificial graphene hearts that’ll turn the recipient into a marathon runner, or private jets that can fly at hypersonic speeds while skimming Earth’s atmosphere. 

Graphene’s transformation of our society will start at ground level, affecting everything rising therefrom. 

The Biggest Changes Will Happen in the Most Casual of Changes

Perhaps the biggest and most world-changing of all the applications out there, is the graphene-based battery. 

No, not the kind that researchers at the University of Manchester may yet construct using a graphene anode to augment the performance of a lithium-ion battery, but a graphene-based, lithium-free battery the world has never seen before. 

Such a battery is currently being developed at an Australian materials technology company based in Brisbane. 

As the company’s name suggests, the business is graphene, which they produce in-house using a proprietary method that brings down costs to commercially scalable levels. 

The batteries that this company is developing will represent a similar step forward in performance as the internal combustion engine did when compared to the horse-drawn carriage. 

Perhaps even more so.

Charge a Car in 1 Minute Flat? Graphene Batteries May Give You That Opportunity

That alone would change the face of the EV industry, not to mention change the fundamental aspects of most of our other battery-powered devices, such as smartphones and tables. 

Safety, charge capacity, and service life are all due for major improvements as well, but the biggest difference of all is the permanent omission of lithium from the battery recipe. 

Lithium, which the Chinese have been weaponizing against us for the last 30 years, today stands as the West’s biggest strategic weak point. 

And along with our consumer goods, our very military itself is also highly dependent on the steady flow of lithium batteries — over 70% of which are produced by companies either partly or wholly owned by the Chinese state.

We do not have the capacity to even begin to compete with the Chinese in terms of mining and refinement, but if the tables were turned entirely by ending the lithium standard, this Chinese advantage could be switched off almost overnight. 

So you see, this company stands at more than just the cusp of changing the global rechargeable battery market. 

It stands to transform the geopolitical world as well. 

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