Hi there, I have a question about graphene and it's application in battery design. Personally I don't know
very much about battery technologies but recently I succeeded in creating an unoptimized procedure for the
creation of graphene flake derived from natural graphite powder. These flakes are dimensionally ranging
from around 15 nanometres up to the micron range and share a height of around 2.88 nanometres
or 5 layers. Probed with a multi meter shows the powder to have a stable electrical resistance of
14.4 ohms over a distance of 1cm.

I never set out to make graphene for electronics, I was always more interested in it's thermal
conductivity and it's potential use as a reinforcement additive but I'm interested in knowing
what, if any application - the material may have in electronics, energy storage etc and
if this particular specification of material would be compatible.

 

Hello there Well,from the literature I have read
Graphene is the newest member of the multidimensional graphite carbon family. It is the most rigid & thinnest material ever discover & has a wide range of uses regarding its unique characteristics.
It's used as a filler in very small quantities to enhances the properties of nanocomposites or nanotubes.
They found that by increasing the graphene amount, obtained molecule mass of polymer decreases, but no significant change in heat resistance of Nano composites have occurred.
Normally, lithium-ion batteries can be charged between 950 and 1200
times. There have been so much research about adding Graphene as second phase to lithium for lithium batteries anode used in laptop batteries. Silicon because of high
nominal capacity & low discharge potential is a suitable material for lithium batteries.
But its mass change in charge and consequential discharge lowers its capacity.
By adding graphene to silicon because of high conductance capability, chemical stability, & also
good mechanical properties, these problems can be removed. New portable computer & telecommunication systems (laptops) use small heat pipes for removing heat, as nowadays computer advancement is such that while showing higher capabilities more heat is produced. Heat pipes are widely used in cooling computers.
These pipes are empty inside containing heat transfer fluid.
When the fluid is vaporized in warm part of the pipes, transfers heat to cool part of the pipes & there the fluid is condensed & returns to the warm part of the pipe.
Increasing heat conductance of
material by manufacturing polymer-graphene nanocomposites has been
boomed incredibly.
Let's see now... oh yeah,a graphene-based transistor was developed on a boron nitride substrate. This
system is able to cool the transistor 10 times more efficiently than conventional methods.
The mechanism used in this tool takes advantage of the 2D nature of graphene & boron nitride to create a thermal bridge with the substrate.
Also. Graphene & its derivatives are extensively used for the manufacture of supercapacitor electrodes
due to their lower costs than other materials such as metal oxides.
Would you believe graphene was substituted in making speakers & microphones.
Both conventional speakers & microphones use either paper or plastic diaphragms, which play a
key role in sound generation or recognition through vibration.
The diaphragms used in new devices are made of a graphene sheet with a thickness of only one atom.
It's a lightweight diaphragm with high hardness and strength, which is able to respond to a wide range of frequencies from infrasound (≤20 Hz) to ultrasound (≥20 kHz).
Note; Reference used & like 10 other books.
T.D. Dao, H.I. Lee and H.M. Jeong, “Alumina-coated Graphene Nanosheet and Its Composite of
Acrylic Rubber”, Colloid. Int. Sci., vol. 416, pp.38–43, 2014.
D. Cai and M.Song, “Recent Advance in Functionalized Graphene/Polymer Nanocomposites”, Mater.
Chem., vol. 20, pp. 7906–7915, 2010.
H. Zhang, W. Zheng, Q. Yan, Y. Yang, J. Wang, and Z. Lu, “Electrically Conductive Polyethylene
Terephthalate/Graphene Nanocomposites Prepared by Melt Compounding”, Polymer, vol. 51, pp.
1191–1196, 2010

 

A lot of these applications seem to utilise graphene in it's sheet form, now that's a little different than what I've done. Chemical Vapour Deposition is the technique used to create 1 layer sheet graphene and it's typically done on a substrate. It's also super expensive to make but what I want to know is can a low cost graphene in powder form be used in electrical components or anything else relating to that industry.

The only thing I've bothered myself to rule out so far is it's use in zinc graphite batteries as a replacement to graphite as I sent some to a guy who makes such battery cells but it doesn't offer any tangible benefit in this application.

I have however utilised it as a thermal interface material for use in drawing heat away from CPU's. This works very well, right now my CPU has nothing but a few graphene flakes between it and a heatsink, no paste or anything else yet even at heavy loads the CPU will not get hot enough to shut down.