According to a report by the Korean publication “The Elec”, Samsung SDI wants to bring technology that has been tried and tested for batteries in electric vehicles to smartphones.
Enlarge
Batteries stacked and not rolled
© silabob / shutterstock.com
Samsung SDI, the offshoot of the Korean state-owned company Samsung, which specializes in batteries, is planning, according to the industry journal “The Elec”, to bring a technology that has been tried and tested for batteries in electric vehicles to the much smaller batteries in smartphones. Instead of rolling up the cathode, separator and anode, the individual elements should be stacked. The electrochemically effective surface increases in such a stack, with the batteries of the same size providing a higher charge.
The Elec, for whose report there is so far no second independent source, writes of an increase in capacity of “over ten percent” – that would not be a real game changer for battery technology. This has been in the starting blocks for quite some time with the SALD technology. Here, too, the stacking of layers increases the active surface area – but this is already happening at the atomic level and could even lead to a tripling of the charging capacity.
More battery – always happy
Nevertheless, a longer battery life is one of the most frequently expressed wishes for every new smartphone generation every year. Ten percent more would either allow for even thinner and lighter devices or extend the runtime by one or two hours, depending on the application. Apple achieved a similar improvement last fall by improving the efficiency of the processors when it jumped from the iPhone 12 generation to the 13 generation. This was particularly noticeable in the iPhone 13 Mini, which was rather weak in the previous version.
“The Elec” continues to speculate that Apple might be interested in purchasing the new M-line batteries (of which there are a total of twelve variants) from Samsung SDI for future iPhones. An advantage of stacking technology could also be that batteries could no longer swell up after prolonged use, a circumstance that has prevented higher densities so far. In any case, Samsung is already building a pilot plant in Tianjin, China, but mass production will be carried out in Cheonan, South Korea.