Graphene-Painted Batteries Could Revolutionize Electric Vehicles

A team led by two Italian researchers, Vittorio Pellegrini and Bruno Scrosati at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa has reached preliminary results which might bring a new edge in electric mobility. The two say that a new type of battery they’ve been working on could store as much as 25% extra energy and what’s really awesome - it needs only minutes to recharge, instead of hours.

The new battery uses graphene, a new material which has opened a wide palette of new opportunities. First isolated in 2004, graphene was proved to be much easier to produce, as the research of Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester proved. For their work, the two have won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010.

Pellegrini and Scrosati came up with the idea of expanding the use of graphene by turning it into a sort of paint and thus making it compliant with much more applications in various industries. According to insella, the new technology has already reached its maturity and is ready for implementation to an industrial scale.