Looking at battery technology alone, you'll find that over the past decade or so, batteries have only been able to increase their capacity to a certain extent, but breakthroughs in completely revolutionary materials have been extremely difficult. As a result, you'll see that while the capacity of mobile phone batteries is constantly increasing, the increase is very small, far less than the development of chips and screens. In fact, many people feel that battery technology has stagnated and is difficult to break through. From the last century to the present, batteries have only progressed from nickel-cadmium batteries to lithium batteries.
Compared to nickel-cadmium batteries, lithium batteries have many differences. For example, the biggest advantage of lithium batteries is that they can be charged frequently and their energy storage capacity is greatly increased. As long as there is always a charge in the battery, the lifespan of lithium batteries can be extended. Nickel-cadmium batteries, on the other hand, are charged by discharging and then recharging, and they have a memory effect. With the development of technology, a new energy storage material has been discovered: graphene.
Graphene's energy storage capacity is an order of magnitude higher than that of lithium batteries. Samsung's graphene battery is said to have five times the energy storage capacity of lithium batteries, and currently only Samsung uses this graphene battery. Mass production is also an issue, and it's hard to say whether it's truly a graphene battery. Huawei's so-called graphene is simply lithium batteries with graphene technology added; the essence is still a lithium battery. According to Moore's Law, a two-year cycle doubles the number of transistors in an integrated circuit, but battery capacity doesn't increase by that ratio. So why is battery technology development so slow and difficult to break through?
The reason lies in the physical limitations of nature. A key challenge in battery technology breakthroughs is that each new electrode introduced new safety issues, such as explosions, short circuits, or increased battery instability. Many scientists have explored various methods, but none have been able to overcome this technological limitation. Some scientists even attempted to incorporate silicon electrodes in the lab to address safety concerns, but this also failed. Therefore, graphene is indeed a promising direction for battery development, but it is not yet mature in terms of mass production or technology, its cost is high, and it cannot increase battery capacity.
The most prominent feature of graphene is its conductivity. However, if it is to become a revolutionary material that can overturn the capacity of battery materials, breakthroughs in physics are still needed. Only by achieving more breakthroughs in basic sciences can we develop better batteries through technological research, which will truly change the way batteries store energy and trigger a revolution.
