Power your reader/laptop/MID with diamonds. WHAT?

[SameOldStory]

Yes, diamonds.

Super Capacitor Could Power Phone, Laptop for Days

"If commercialized, the new super capacitor could be fully charged in a second and, coupled to a normal battery, provide enough energy to power a cell phone for weeks or a laptop battery for days."

"The researchers then transformed those nanodiamonds into dozens or even hundreds of graphene layers, all nestled inside one another like little Russian dolls."

Now we need to get the ereader of our choice down below $50 and lower than 3 oz.

[SameOldStory]

OK. Looks like most of you are very good at holding in your incredible excitement.

For the next step we have the Memristor.
Memristor revolution backed by HP
"Memristor memory chips promise to run at least 10 times faster and use 10 times less power than an equivalent Flash memory chip," said Stan Williams, the HP Fellow who first demonstrated the memristor, in a statement by the firm.

Just what will we be reading on in 3 to 5 years?

[HamsterRage]

I've heard about memristors before. They're cool.

I figure most people's eyes glaze over with the physics and technical stuff so they tune it out.

[SameOldStory]

Perhaps you're right. I should have posted it on Paris Hilton's website. I hear that she may have need of a low powered device with an exceptionally long battery life.

[J. Strnad]

Does the phrase "ten times less power" make sense?

[abigsmurf]

When the graphene "onions" are bathed and charged in an organic electrolyte, they can discharge up to 200 volts every second. If the technology is optimized that number could be further increased several times, said Mochalin.

Please... Make the awful science stop... It hurts.

Volts are a unit of force, not a measurement of power or of stored energy. To say a battery can put out 200V is utterly meaningless. You can generate 20,000V just by walking across a carpet in socks.

I'll believe in super capacitors as a viable method when they can hold their charge for more than a couple of days and don't explode violently at the drop of a hat.

[Mumin]

Originally Posted by abigsmurf

Please... Make the awful science stop... It hurts.

There's even better: "You need an electrically conductive material for a capacitor [...] said Olga Shenderova, a nanodiamond expert"

[abigsmurf]

I love the way that the article gives the impression that having capacitors with lots of layers is a miraculous new invention. They've been around since 1926!

I'm guessing the reason these graphene sheets are special is that they're incredible insulators, even when when only a few molecules thick, so you can dramatically increase the surface area.

[dapriuk]

Graphine is a sheet of carbon atoms, one atom thick. IE it is very, very thin so you can make capacitors very small or have many, many layers in the same space as today's devices but with significantly greater capacitance.

If Graphene behaves like Graphite then it conducts electricity between atoms in the sheet but not between sheets, so it sounds like an excellent material for capacitors.

... But don't cross the sheets otherwise very big bang.

[abigsmurf]

It's a very big bang with ordinary capacitors, I dread to think what the bang would be like for capatitors with hundreds of times the energy density

[SameOldStory]

I can't wait for the first fool to figure a way to penetrate it with his teeth on YouTube.

Darwin Award time.

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You know you're a hillbilly if you ever had a relative die after saying "Hay, y'all. Watch this".