NWN: Graphene battery research by Samsung experiences breakthrough in manufacturing process

[JMS]

Wow we may be only a few years away from leaving the Lithium Ion Battery era we've been trapped in for the last 18 years.   

 

http://www.neowin.net/news/graphene-battery-research-by-samsung-experiences-breakthrough-in-manufacturing-process

 

 

Graphene battery research by Samsung experiences breakthrough in manufacturing process


Battery innovation has been stuck in the lithium ion age over the past few decades, and progress towards a better battery has hardly moved at all when compared to exponential jumps in storage space, memory capacity and processor computing speeds. However, in the recent past, graphene (similar to a pencil’s graphite) has enjoyed success in solving some of the roadblocks of lithium ion technology. In fact, the potential output of the material far outlasts and exceeds the capacity of traditional lithium ion in terms of volume and weight. On top of that, the material is flexible and can be adapted in new flexible displays. However, the reason we haven’t seen devices using graphene yet is due to difficulties in the implementation of the delicate processes involved in building graphene layers on a large manufacturing scale.

According to the post on Samsung’s blog, it seems Samsung has finally grasped the manufacturing process, and stated that in partnership with Sungkyunkwan University, SAIT (Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology) has become the first group of researchers to harness the benefits of graphene on a large scale manufacturing platform. The process is designed to overcome previous problems which included deteriorating electric properties. The breakthrough was accomplished by synthesizing “large area graphene onto a single crystal on a semiconductor, maintaining its electrical and mechanical properties.”

Samsung and Sungkyunkwan University have been working on graphene and other nano research since 2006, and the partnership has yielded the most awaited leap in efficient energy management. We will see the technology decrease the size of our phones and tablets further, as well as power smart watches and even allow tiny devices to achieve incredible battery life. As processors make the switch to 14 nanometer processes, and flexible devices are becoming popular, the world is finally ready for a revolutionary change in how often we charge our devices, and what types of efficiency we will expect from them in the future.

[mjah]

Very happy to see any real progress being made in production tech for next gen batteries.

 

At the same time, I recall an era when Ni-Cd rechargeable batteries, with their lower capabilities and strong memory effects, were the best thing going for most devices.  So while mass-market graphene battery tech will be astounding, I tend to think of the "Li ion age" we're currently living in as still being pretty good.

[Predicto]

This is a huge, huge deal if it works out.  The effect on electronics is big, but the potential spillover to graphene batteries for electric cars is absolutely enormous.

 

Somehow I find it sad that this breakthrough is happening in South Korea rather than in the USA.  This type of fundamental engineering used to be our bailiwick, with the Asian countries mostly just improving the technology developed here.  That is no longer the case.     

[Riggo-toni]

I remember a quote from an article in the Economist where someone predicted the US would stay ahead of Asia because "our Asians" would beat "their Asians" - a reference to how freer markets and upward mobility in the USA would always attract the best and the brightest. That was in the 90s. Two decades later and populist pandering has us sending them back home.

[JMS]

That was in the 90s. Two decades later and populist pandering has us sending them back home.

(1) I would say the biggest edge the United States has over nearly every other country on earth isn't our people, but our constitution and our mature republic. A good Idea in China or Japan doesn't ensure funding, because funding is centrally controlled. That's a huge liability which means many if not most foreign good ideas will always come here to roost, augmenting our own fine ideas; historically.

(2) Importing cheap inexpensive engineering talent from overseas has crippled our economy, eclipsed an entire generation of American engineering talent(maybe two), and nearly removed the United States from the high tech industry. An industry which our engineers invented, pioneered, and oversaw into the juggernaut it is today...The high tech industry which will be among the most important segments of the global economy for decades maybe the next century and beyond... We've exported it.

Thank God we have reduced H1B visas. Let's never go back to the days of 2001-2004.

[sacase]

(1) I would say the biggest edge the United States has over nearly every other country on earth isn't our people, but our constitution and our mature republic. A good Idea in China or Japan doesn't ensure funding, because funding is centrally controlled. That's a huge liability which means many if not most foreign good ideas will always come here to roost, augmenting our own fine ideas; historically.

(2) Importing cheap inexpensive engineering talent from overseas has crippled our economy, eclipsed an entire generation of American engineering talent(maybe two), and nearly removed the United States from the high tech industry. An industry which our engineers invented, pioneered, and oversaw into the juggernaut it is today...The high tech industry which will be among the most important segments of the global economy for decades maybe the next century and beyond... We've exported it.

Thank God we have reduced H1B visas. Let's never go back to the days of 2001-2004.

 

Blame the universities also. Universities rather get foreign students who pay huge amounts rather than Americans who pay much less. Its all about money.

[mcsluggo]

Blame the universities also. Universities rather get foreign students who pay huge amounts rather than Americans who pay much less. Its all about money.

 

That is simply not true.   It might be true in the UK, but not here.  STATE schools in the US <sometimes> have an incentive to admit more out-of-state, than in-state students, but not foreign.  I know the applications at my school scewed heavily foreign, and if you were a domestic student, you got a little bit of a bump in attractiveness to the admissions board--- but overall they were looking for reputation points, and the best prospective students.     

 

 

 

but for whatever reason we ARE educating many foreigners... as a coutry we should be cherry picking the crap out of them, and keeping as many as we can here.   We are getting worse and worse at doing that.

[Riggo-toni]

(2) Importing cheap inexpensive engineering talent from overseas has crippled our economy, eclipsed an entire generation of American engineering talent(maybe two), and nearly removed the United States from the high tech industry. An industry which our engineers invented, pioneered, and oversaw into the juggernaut it is today...The high tech industry which will be among the most important segments of the global economy for decades maybe the next century and beyond... We've exported it.

Thank God we have reduced H1B visas. Let's never go back to the days of 2001-2004.

You dont want to go back to the days when 60% of Silicon Valley startups were created by immigrants, big gains in productivity and the stock market. I work in IT, and far more jobs are lost to outsourcing to other countries than cheap immigrant engineers. Our economy was crippled by rapacious Wall Street bankers, and engineering degrees still have the highest return on tuition costs according to an article that just came out in this week's Economist.

[JMS]

You dont want to go back to the days when 60% of Silicon Valley startups were created by immigrants, big gains in productivity and the stock market. I work in IT, and far more jobs are lost to outsourcing to other countries than cheap immigrant engineers. Our economy was crippled by rapacious Wall Street bankers, and engineering degrees still have the highest return on tuition costs according to an article that just came out in this week's Economist.

You will have to provide links to prove 60% of silicon valley startups were created by immigrants in 2001. That occurred in 2006 after the United States abandoned our domestic engineering force for a generation by importing 3,4, 500,000 cheap foreign engineers...

And outsourcing is directly enabled by insourcing..

And bringing in 200,000 cheap foreign indentured labor in a single year when the economy was sheding high tech jobs year after year after year destroyed america's engineering capability... In the 80's they said we didn't have enough engineers so we should import them... in the 90's after importing hundreds of thousands of them we were training fewer than half as many domestic engineers than the 80's. After the year 2000, just forget about it.. It wasn't uncommon to see companies like bank of America, World Comm, AT&T, Verizon, IBM with engineering staffs of 1, 2, 400 guys, devoid of any American citizens.

Young American engineers at this time were more likely to go into sales than practice engineering.. We abandoned the market we created... I know a few engineers who actually had to go to India to find work they were so discriminated against here.

It was a crazy stupid time, and we are well rid of it.

There is no domestic industry in the country which could survive if you import hundreds of thousands of cheap unempowered, indentured slaves to fill their jobs... none.. America's once proud high tech segment was no different.

[Riggo-toni]

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21576101-start-ups-founded-immigrants-are-creating-jobs-all-over-america-jobs-machine

http://qz.com/11113/one-quarter-of-u-s-tech-start-ups-founded-by-an-immigrant-study/

[dfitzo53]

You will have to provide links to prove 60% of silicon valley startups were created by immigrants in 2001. That occurred in 2006 after the United States abandoned our domestic engineering force for a generation by importing 3,4, 500,000 cheap foreign engineers...

And outsourcing is directly enabled by insourcing..

And bringing in 200,000 cheap foreign indentured labor in a single year when the economy was sheding high tech jobs year after year after year destroyed america's engineering capability... In the 80's they said we didn't have enough engineers so we should import them... in the 90's after importing hundreds of thousands of them we were training fewer than half as many domestic engineers than the 80's. After the year 2000, just forget about it.. It wasn't uncommon to see companies like bank of America, World Comm, AT&T, Verizon, IBM with engineering staffs of 1, 2, 400 guys, devoid of any American citizens.

Young American engineers at this time were more likely to go into sales than practice engineering.. We abandoned the market we created... I know a few engineers who actually had to go to India to find work they were so discriminated against here.

It was a crazy stupid time, and we are well rid of it.

There is no domestic industry in the country which could survive if you import hundreds of thousands of cheap unempowered, indentured slaves to fill their jobs... none.. America's once proud high tech segment was no different.

If you're asking him to provide links shouldn't you provide some?

[sacase]

That is simply not true.   It might be true in the UK, but not here.  STATE schools in the US <sometimes> have an incentive to admit more out-of-state, than in-state students, but not foreign.  I know the applications at my school scewed heavily foreign, and if you were a domestic student, you got a little bit of a bump in attractiveness to the admissions board--- but overall they were looking for reputation points, and the best prospective students.     

 

 

 

but for whatever reason we ARE educating many foreigners... as a coutry we should be cherry picking the crap out of them, and keeping as many as we can here.   We are getting worse and worse at doing that.

No its 100% right. This is an issue I have been working for the past two years. It is a very significant problem. Hell, I know a specific university in San Diego that issues student visa's and many of the students disappear once they get here. University don't care cause they are making huge amounts of money. This is not supposition, this is actual experience working this problem set.

[LadySkinsFan]

Is this something that could be applied to the solar power industry?  Increased battery capacity and storage would be huge too.

[JMS]

Blame the universities also. Universities rather get foreign students who pay huge amounts rather than Americans who pay much less. Its all about money.

 

Facts are University Engineering programs across the country are shrinking.   When 600,000 cheap foreign indentured engineers were brought in over a 3 year period when jobs were contracting,  wages dropped,  innovation dropped,  and so did enrollment in the engineering fields.

 

• In the 80's we went from 45,000 H1B's to 65,000.
• In the 1990's we went from 65,000 to   115,000.
• In 2000 when the dot com bubble crashed and the Y2k jobs all went away and the computer jobs market began to contract we went to 195,000 and stayed there until the end of fiscal year 2004.    That was pretty much the death nell for the American technology industry.

Even in 2000 before the massive wave of foreign engineers most computer work in this country was done by cheap, inexperienced foreign engineers.   They cost a third as much as Americans and they are legally bound to their job for six years as terms of their visa...

 

In the 1990's most foreign engineers who came he wanted to graduate from the H1b program,  get their green card,  see their wages double or tripple overnight and enter the American Job market.  When we started to grant 100,000+  H1B's this no longer was the goal.   There were never enough greencards,  for that many H1B's.    After the 1990's the H1B goal was to get here,  get some good experience,  and return home where their salary went further...  Only with 6 years of experience here when they left they typically took their jobs with them.    We just exported the entire high tech industry to the third world.

[BlueinBuf]

That is simply not true.   It might be true in the UK, but not here.  STATE schools in the US <sometimes> have an incentive to admit more out-of-state, than in-state students, but not foreign.  I know the applications at my school scewed heavily foreign, and if you were a domestic student, you got a little bit of a bump in attractiveness to the admissions board--- but overall they were looking for reputation points, and the best prospective students.     

 

 

 

but for whatever reason we ARE educating many foreigners... as a coutry we should be cherry picking the crap out of them, and keeping as many as we can here.   We are getting worse and worse at doing that.

 

I think I have to disagree with you here. I went to a SUNY(State university of NY) school and now live in a town with a different one. And the number of foreign students seemed/seems very high when compared to other groups. Now I don't have data just observation and maybe I'm skewed by American students of Asian decent. But I think if you were to ask most SUNY students what makes up the biggest portion of the student base they would first say Asians and then second probably kids from Long Island. 

[JMS]

If you're asking him to provide links shouldn't you provide some?

 

What fact do you want to see a link on?   That the computer jobs market contracted after the dot com bubble popped?   That nearly simultaniously all the American engineers working on the Y2k issues lost their jobs,  and the American High Tech Jobs market seriously contracted.    Or that that's the same time that for four years running H1B visa's went to 195,000  resulting in about 800,000 cheap foreign indentured engineers flooding the US jobs market eclipsing the domestic work force?

 

You have to realize there were probable fewer than a million high tech engineering jobs in the country when this H1B wave hit..   I know American engineers who were waiting tables or selling used cars during this period.    I know folks who literally left the country to find work because there were no engineering jobs to be had in this country in 2000-2002 time frame.

 

That during this time the unemployment rate for American Engineers eclipsed the national unemployment numbers.  while H1B visa quota's would get filled in a single month,  then week,  then day...   Yep they got to 100,000+  H1B visa's getting awarded in a single day for a few years..

Every H1B visa meant 30-60% salary savings for a US Firm,  3-4k fee for some immigration lawyer,  and tens of thousands of dollars for some staffing firm.    All at the expense of the American Engineer.

 

That  in the 1990's Silicon Valley was the #1 computer market in the county,  #2 was Boston,  #3 was Washington DC....  Since the flood of foreign engineers in the early 2000's that's been flipped on it's head.   Washington DC area is #1 for computer jobs because H1B's can't do government work that requires clearances...   Silicon Valley and Boston jobs market became distant afterthoughts.

[JMS]

but for whatever reason we ARE educating many foreigners... as a coutry we should be cherry picking the crap out of them, and keeping as many as we can here.   We are getting worse and worse at doing that.

 

We've always educated many foreigners in this country, always.    In most of the rest of the world a university education is something that goes to the elite.   Most countries can match an elite American University education,  but none of them can match it across such a broad array of schools such as the United States.    Most countries have an elite University like a Cornell or Cal Tech..   But no other country in the world has an alternative to the American land grant University system...   The U. of Michigan,  U of Maryland,  Penn State  even Mass Institute of Technology..   The 100 or so American Large Land Grant State schools which offer fine engineering training and do it on a mass scale...    We simple have the capacity to train a higher percentage of our population at the University level than other countries,  least on such a scale.    For most countries a university education is reserved for the elite..  Here quality educations are available to a much broader segment of our populations and always have been.   And the educations we can offer are respected around the world...    

 

When salaries dropped in the US high tech sector,   University engineering enrollment went down,  and foreign students who always had a place in our University education system began to fill empty seats which a lot of American students no longer found attractive.     Why become an  American engineer when American engineers can't find work and their wages are stagnant or declining?    That's the net result of bringing in 800,000 cheap indentured engineers into our market over 4 years.   or about 1.2 million over 10.

[dfitzo53]

What fact do you want to see a link on?   That the computer jobs market contracted after the dot com bubble popped?   That nearly simultaniously all the American engineers working on the Y2k issues lost their jobs,  and the American High Tech Jobs market seriously contracted.    Or that that's the same time that for four years running H1B visa's went to 195,000  resulting in about 800,000 cheap foreign indentured engineers flooding the US jobs market eclipsing the domestic work force?

 

You have to realize there were probable fewer than a million high tech engineering jobs in the country when this H1B wave hit..   I know American engineers who were waiting tables or selling used cars during this period.    I know folks who literally left the country to find work because there were no engineering jobs to be had in this country in 2000-2002 time frame.

 

That during this time the unemployment rate for American Engineers eclipsed the national unemployment numbers.  while H1B visa quota's would get filled in a single month,  then week,  then day...   Yep they got to 100,000+  H1B visa's getting awarded in a single day for a few years..

Every H1B visa meant 30-60% salary savings for a US Firm,  3-4k fee for some immigration lawyer,  and tens of thousands of dollars for some staffing firm.    All at the expense of the American Engineer.

 

That  in the 1990's Silicon Valley was the #1 computer market in the county,  #2 was Boston,  #3 was Washington DC....  Since the flood of foreign engineers in the early 2000's that's been flipped on it's head.   Washington DC area is #1 for computer jobs because H1B's can't do government work that requires clearances...   Silicon Valley and Boston jobs market became distant afterthoughts.

Whatever you like.  I'm just wondering why you believe he has to provide outside supports and you don't.

 

To the outside observer there's no difference between the truth of his statements and yours.  They're both just largely anonymous posts on a messageboard.

[JMS]

You will have to provide links to prove 60% of silicon valley startups were created by immigrants in 2001. That occurred in 2006 after the United States abandoned our domestic engineering force for a generation by importing 3,4, 500,000 cheap foreign engineers...

60% of silicon valley startups were founded by foreign engineers in 2006 closer to 8% in 2000. Even fewer than that in the 1980's when H1B levels were smaller than US Graduation rates in STEM fields.

 

In 2005 ..... the percentage of immigrant-founded startups had increased to 52 percent.

In 2006, foreign nationals residing in the United States were named as inventors or co-inventors in an astounding 25.6 percent of patent applications filed from the United States, a substantial increase from 7.6 percent in 1998. Foreign nationals also contributed to a majority of some U.S. companies' patent applications, including Qualcomm—72 percent, Merck—65 percent, GE—64 percent, and Cisco—60 percent. More than 40 percent of the U.S. government-filed international patent applications had foreign authors.

http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/articles/2008/11/foreignborn-entrepreneurs-an-underestimated-american-resource

And outsourcing is directly enabled by insourcing..

http://kmcsolutions.us/blog/2013/11/6/why-companies-need-both-insourcing-and-outsourcing

And bringing in 200,000 cheap foreign indentured labor in a single year when the economy

See years 2000-2004

http://www.zazona.com/shameh1b/h1bhistory.htm

 

was sheding high tech jobs year after year after year destroyed america's engineering capability...

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/popups/exporting.america/content.html

Young American engineers at this time were more likely to go into sales than practice engineering.. We abandoned the market we created...

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-02-12/glut-of-foreign-students-hurts-u-s-innovation

[mcsluggo]

I don't think there is much truth in any of the points in you post there ....

 

 

the TOP universities is what the rest of the world can NOT duplicate.. right?  show me the Cornells in other countries.  There is one top 30 university in Japan, one in switzerland, and perhaps Peking University.......  and......??? after that they are all in the US or the UK (i am generously including Canada as part of the US for this   i am sure they won't mind!).  

 

US student demand for engineering/tech field certainly did NOT decline during (or at least because) recent economic downturns.. during those periods those were the degrees that still got jobs straight out of school.  everybody in school recognized that.  U.S. students are competing with more foreign students for those slots...and frankly... those degrees are hard, and make college less fun.

[HOF44]

So how long would one of these batteries make your phone last????

[Tulane Skins Fan]

I remember a quote from an article in the Economist where someone predicted the US would stay ahead of Asia because "our Asians" would beat "their Asians" - a reference to how freer markets and upward mobility in the USA would always attract the best and the brightest. That was in the 90s. Two decades later and populist pandering has us sending them back home.

 

Our free market is actually controlled by corporate america.

[JMS]

the TOP universities is what the rest of the world can NOT duplicate.. right?

No, that's the point. If you look at the top engineering schools in the world... The US has probable as many or more of them as anybody.. half the top ten, maybe 20-30% of the top 100. But there are many countries which have top engineering schools..

Historically America's edge in technology has never been we had the best engineers. If you look at WWII, germany had some rock star engineers.. Warner Von Braun.. He's like a beatle for engineers. If you look at the cold war era and the soviet union... They had some rockstar engineers too. Sergei Korolev, Mikhail Koshkin, Andrei Sakharov... Those guys were easily as good and many would consider them better than their American counterparts...

What the soviet union never had, what won the cold war for us, what made American technology as good or better in the latter half of the 20th century was not our best engineers, it was our next level of engineer. The soviets had great rockstars, but they didn't have anybody backing them up. After you got passed the elites, the average soviet engineer wasn't competitive. We had legions of good engineers coming out of our large land grant universities. That was always our edge.

Globally there are many elite engineering programs.. which rank favorable to our top schools...

 

show me the Cornells in other countries. There is one top 30 university in Japan, one in switzerland, and perhaps Peking University....... and......??? after that they are all in the US or the UK (i am generously including Canada as part of the US for this i am sure they won't mind!).

I think MIT and Stanford would be the two best engineering schools in the country broadly. Neither is the best at everything but broadly across all engineering disciplines those are the two best schools in the US.

I don't think Cornell(A top 10 American engineering program) would be top 10 in the world. I think Berkley and Cal Tech would round out our best schools and their would even be international schools ranked above them.

I think Cornell, which is also an elite top 10 American school would rank behind the schools mentioned below.

Cambridge University

University of Tokyo

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

University of Toronto (Canada)

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

University of Melbourne (Australia)

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

ETH Zurich

Imperial College London

National University of Singapore (NUS)

Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

University of Oxford

[PeterMP]

University of Melbourne (Australia)

 

This is just one of those things that I can't let go.  Nobody thinks that the UoM is on par with the best Universities in the US.  They are on par with the best state universities.  They are comparable to UW or Univ of Michigan.

 

It is questionable if it is the best institution in Australia:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_National_University

 

"ANU counts six Nobel laureates among its faculty and alumni.^[9] Students entering ANU in 2013 had a median Australian Tertiary Admission Rank of 93,^[10][11] the equal-highest among Australian universities.^[12] In the 2013 Global Employability University Ranking, an annual ranking of university graduates' employability, ANU was ranked 1st nationally (20th in the world).^[13]

ANU is a member of the Group of Eight and the International Alliance of Research Universities. As Australia’s only member of this prestigious association, ANU enjoys close relationships and exchange partnerships with the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, University of California, Berkeley, Yale University, Peking University, National University of Singapore,University of Tokyo, University of Copenhagen and ETH Zurich."

And just to be clear ANU is not as good as the other institutions in that list.

[The Sisko]

This is a huge, huge deal if it works out.  The effect on electronics is big, but the potential spillover to graphene batteries for electric cars is absolutely enormous.

 

Somehow I find it sad that this breakthrough is happening in South Korea rather than in the USA.  This type of fundamental engineering used to be our bailiwick, with the Asian countries mostly just improving the technology developed here.  That is no longer the case.

Meh, nothing will ever come of this. Green jobs are just a liberal fantasy.

  

You will have to provide links to prove 60% of silicon valley startups were created by immigrants in 2001. That occurred in 2006 after the United States abandoned our domestic engineering force for a generation by importing 3,4, 500,000 cheap foreign engineers...

And outsourcing is directly enabled by insourcing..

And bringing in 200,000 cheap foreign indentured labor in a single year when the economy was sheding high tech jobs year after year after year destroyed america's engineering capability... In the 80's they said we didn't have enough engineers so we should import them... in the 90's after importing hundreds of thousands of them we were training fewer than half as many domestic engineers than the 80's. After the year 2000, just forget about it.. It wasn't uncommon to see companies like bank of America, World Comm, AT&T, Verizon, IBM with engineering staffs of 1, 2, 400 guys, devoid of any American citizens...

There is no domestic industry in the country which could survive if you import hundreds of thousands of cheap unempowered, indentured slaves to fill their jobs... none.. America's once proud high tech segment was no different.

So in other words...they took urr jerbs!

 

Look, I feel for you but what makes engineers so special that they're supposed to be exempt from this type of corporate behavior? Outsourcing has affected wide swaths of the job market as a whole. Besides, if you think about it, this is actually a good thing because it increased corporate profits which put more money in the job creators pockets which in turn created more jobs. So it all works out, see?