Graphene Battery Tech: is the future here yet, finally?
a flexible display scenario. The new abilities of the displays to fold in any direction with ease, tends to weaken the glass and will break much easier. Even the flexible glass. So, in essence, displays are outpa - cing their glass cover counterparts. Level 3: Will things become AIO (all in one) SOCs? (system on a chip) Now that we have looked at the potential future of level 2 component repair, lets jump into level 3 for a moment before we come back around to the basics. So, what is on every microsolderers' mind? Well, ever since we started seeing sandwich board PCB designs take off, even seasoned vets have started to get worried about the complexity of their day-to- day repairs. With good cause too. It seems like the current trend may be to try and maximize workable surface area for PCB inclusion. Not only to pack more horsepower, but to also allow more room for their battery cells to keep the juice flowing. Now that is all well and good, but where does that leave the board techs? I have started to see new types of PCB design be- hind the scenes and also read quite a bit on upco- ming designs. Enough to guess that we will start to see more complete SOC (System on a Chip) type designs coming down the pipeline. What does this mean exactly? Well, take a gander over at your local WIFI chip and you will notice that we are starting to see interIC related repairs. Where you need to drill into the chip to accomplish some sort of repair. I think that it might come as no surprise that we may start to see entire boards encased in this type of sputter coated design. Based on the fact that the current industry trend is to push away from repa- rability, and more toward replacements. This tech combined with flexible PCBs, might put us back into a time not too far in the past “mid 90s”. Whe- re you would sometimes need to remove thick hard epoxies before you could attempt your repair work. While I am not certain what this will look like with flexible PCBs, I have a good feeling that we will see boards that will be seemingly All in One style.
Graphene battery tech is super exciting. I know we have talked about a lot of potential doom and gloom, but this is one of my favourite things right now. Supposedly we will be seeing a major brand drop a graphene battery this year in a phone. What does that mean? It means that we are experiencing a pa- radigm shift in energy technology. It means that we will be seeing battery tech that will far outclass its predecessor in many aspects. For the same space in a cell, we will be able to hold a higher capacity. Which means that we can also pack the same ca- pacities in smaller spaces. Combine that with more energy efficient chip designs means that, I might actually get a smartwatch that does legit smart- watch things. And lasts a week, or two. Instead of having to charge daily. I think this would be a massive positive for weara- bles. These types of batteries also charge much faster. Now that PD-charging standards have mo- ved to 240 watts, graphene technology is relevant more than ever. So, all this is super exciting, but the absolute best aspect of this is the fact that at peak usage, the technology promises lower overall opera- ting temps and safer technology against any sort of thermal runaway type event occurring. I think that battery tech is about to enter its next push forward with graphene, how exciting. We are starting to see hybrid graphene/lithium ion batteries in Xiaomi like the Mi 10 Ultra. As well with Samsung's new graphene ball technology.
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