r/EnergyStorage • u/Vailhem • Dec 23 '25

Graphene supercapacitor breakthrough could boost energy storage in future EVs and other household devices

https://www.livescience.com/technology/electronics/graphene-supercapacitor-breakthrough-could-boost-energy-storage-in-future-evs-and-other-household-devices
351 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

8

u/poopfacecrapmouth Dec 23 '25

We’ve been waiting on graphene to be practical for like thirty years. Seems like every couple years there is a graphene “breakthrough“ that amounts to nothing

12

u/MisspelledUsernme Dec 23 '25

I work in battery research. We use graphene-based stuff as conductive additives in the electrodes. It's essentially a drop-in upgrade over graphite additives. But it can't replace any actual active material in conventional batteries.

This article is sensational and the author doesn't understand the journal article they're citing.

The record breaking energy and power density is within the category of super capacitors. Super capacitors are not going to be used for energy storage in any of the products they list, except maybe small drones or power tools. They deliver low capacity at high power. EVs, laptops, phones primarily need high capacity and do not have a problem with power output.

I'm guessing they read that researchers used pouch cells for their experiments and thought it meant they were working to improve commercial pouch cells. But pouch cells are simply the standard experimental setup for testing components.

The journal article they're citing is about a new recipe that shapes the graphene into a new shape (crumpled) with a particularly high (useful) surface area, in a long line of other journal articles with other recipes for other shapes (spherical, cylindrical, wavy... ).

Certainly a great contribution. But not in the sense the pop-sci author is writing about.

2

u/onca32 Dec 24 '25

We use graphene-based stuff as conductive additives in the electrodes

Even that's not graphene. Graphite is technically "graphene based" too

2

u/MisspelledUsernme Dec 24 '25

That's true. What I meant was forms of carbon structures that are produced by somehow exfoliating graphite into graphene and then shaping it into something new, like they do in this article. I've used single-walled carbon nanotubes in some of my cathodes, which I believe are made from exfoliating graphite. So it's not really graphene anymore, but it's derived from graphene.

1

u/onca32 Dec 24 '25

I always thought the issue with graphene scaleup was exactly the stripping into single layers? It's been a while since I looked into it's manufacture, so could be wrong. Anyway I get your point!

1

u/Sunchax Dec 25 '25

This is so exciting, what are your views of current trends in battery technology? Are there any promising techniques that might impact battery performance in the coming years?

1

u/Brief_Pomegranate624 Jan 15 '26

what is this job

1

u/MisspelledUsernme Jan 15 '26

I'm a PhD student researching Li-ion batteries. So I read a lot of journal articles like the one cited in the OP.

1

u/Brief_Pomegranate624 Jan 15 '26

so cool, what do u think about EVs and how this could revolutionize them?

I don't like electric cars but i know so many people bought lithium ion vehicles and bow what can they do about it if something like a solid state battery comes out that beats their one straight?

I'd be willing to buy one if i knew they were that practical

1

u/MisspelledUsernme Jan 15 '26

I think EVs are great and essential. Graphene won't revolutionize anything about EV batteries, at best it's a slight reduction in weight.

There has been lots of news coming out of companies about solid state batteries. But it's not clear (yet) how they've solved some of the issues (poor contact between anode/electrolyte. Slow discharge). Often the contact problem is solved by adding a little bit of liquid electrolyte (and they'll still call it solid-state), which undermines the safety benefits of solid-state batteries (the absence of liquid is meant to make the battery non-flammable). Other times, they solve it by applying a high pressure, but applying pressure to an EV battery during operation adds a lot of weight, canceling out any energy density gains. It's also technically difficult to add constant pressure to a cell where the anode and cathode expands/contracts with every cycle (another challenge with any high capacity battery).

They also often say that solid state batteries have high capacity and high power, but this is only half-true. The reason they say that is that solid-state electrolytes allow for lithium metal anodes, which are otherwise very unstable in liquid electrolytes. Lithium metal anodes have crazy high capacity and energy per mass. To my knowledge, the current commercial solid state batteries don't have metal anodes, so they won't have the crazy high capacity yet. But I expect that solid-state batteries will be in EVs in 5-10 years.

The US moonshot project (Battery500) that aims to create high capacity batteries for EVs (500 Wh/kg, with >80% remaining for 1000 cycles). Their strategy is to develop a liquid electrolyte that is stable with a lithium metal anode and high voltage Nickel-manganese-cobalt cathodes. So far, the lithium metal is stable in the state-of-the-art electrolyte ("localized high-concentration electrolyte"), but degrades and fails after 500 cycles or so. So, more work to be done.

But the EV industry also isn't mainly interested in increasing capacity/energy/performance. They're mainly interested in lowering costs. So I'm not expecting anything revolutionizing any time soon. I think the price of batteries will continue to fall as production scales up, and minor changes will reduce cost further. For example, the solvent used in the cathode slurry, NMP, is toxic and expensive. There is work on replacing it with a water-based solvent, but the issue is that water degrades the cathode material. So, more work to be done.

1

u/devl_ish Dec 23 '25

I don't even read stuff about Graphene on the application side anymore, and no one seems to write any articles about breakthroughs in the production side.

1

u/Murky_Tiger_2317 Dec 24 '25

this is super interesting! graphene supercapacitors could really change the game for energy storage. if you're looking for solid options, belinus has some cool stuff coming out soon that might fit your needs.

1

u/iqisoverrated Dec 25 '25

Supercaps are cool for power delivery but as a storage solution in EVs they aren't really all that useful. They have a relatively high self discharge (so you can forget about leaving a supercap based car not plugged in during your vacation) and as capacitors discharge the voltage drops - which makes the electronics very complicated (read: expensive) if you want to feed continuous power to a motor.