Dear Reader,
Last winter, rumors of a graphene heat shield for the soon-to-be released iPhone 16 sent a few ripples through the tech universe, and now that we’re as little as two weeks from the actual release, that question may once again be on the minds of investors and Apple fanbois the world over.
Though the exact date remained unknown as of this writing, it’s now believed that the latest version of the iconic smartphone will be revealed to the public in the first week of September.
Why graphene? The answer is as simple as they come. Graphene is the world’s most effective known heat conductor, with 10x the efficiency of copper.
For a small, highly exothermic device like a smartphone, the chance to accelerate cooling without making the device larger isn’t just appealing, but a life-or-death struggle.
The reason is that with every successive generation, wireless devices are expected to achieve one or two things (and preferably both) — become more powerful and/or become smaller.
Each of these functions requires an increase in relative battery size, which in turn means more heat to dissipate.
When improving processing speed and at the same time shrinking the device, the problem of heat compounds (see square-cube law).
All Roads Lead Back to Graphene
That graphene was viewed as a serious candidate for achieving this enhanced functionality was only a matter of time.
For those who’ve been following the evolution of the world’s first man-made nanostructure, implementation into consumer goods is a fulfillment of a years-old promise.
And one that’s been painfully slow to arrive.
Most of us who believed the hype of the previous decade expected everything to be made of graphene by now.
From race cars to sailboats to high performance airframes, this wonder material was supposed to take over a laundry list of industries.
The reality is that graphene’s prohibitive costs made anything approaching mass commercialization a thing of fantasy.
It took a revolution in graphene production to make its transformation from science project to industrial building block possible.
Right now, one of the battles of that revolution is being waged at an Australian materials technology company based in the eastern Australian coastal town of Brisbane.
This company makes low-cost, high-volume, high-quality graphene in house using a proprietary production process that requires nothing more than natural gas and electricity.
The Last Piece of the Puzzle: Cost Reduction
It’s not a matter of choice for this company, as its entire product line depends on a steady and economically viable supply of graphene.
The company is known primarily for its award-winning graphene thermal coatings, but the product line it’s currently developing, which could change the world as we know it, is the graphene-aluminum rechargeable battery.
In terms of performance, these batteries are in a different universe from what we’re used to.
Three times the charge capacity over lithium-ion, up to five times the charge cycle life span, and 70 times the charge speed.
Putting all that into a real-world use scenario, a graphene battery pack in an EV could be fully charged in less than a minute for a driving range of well over 1,000 miles, and would be expected to last for a million miles or more before requiring major overhaul.
And those are just the performance benefits.
Commercially available graphene-aluminum batteries would also present almost no fire risk, and contain absolutely zero lithium.
Don’t Feed the Chinese Communist Party
That last fact is more profound than you may think, as lithium refining is an industry that’s dominated by the Chinese, with 70% of global production linked back to the CCP.
So next time you pick up your smartphone, or tablet, or laptop, just imagine that a good portion of the weight you’re lifting was sold to you by a hostile foreign power with global domination in its sights.
Taking that strategic advantage away from our biggest economic and military rival is only frosting on this cake, and yet also represents an unimaginably significant shift in the global balance of resource wealth.
More significant than the development of any weapon system.
The company that’s developing these graphene batteries is small. In fact, unless you’ve already read about it here, I bet you’ve never even heard the name.
Nevertheless, it’s public and trades on two North American exchanges.
Want to learn more?
Fortune favors the bold, Alex Koyfman His flagship service, Microcap Insider, provides market-beating insights into some of the fastest moving, highest profit-potential companies available for public trading on the U.S. and Canadian exchanges. With more than 5 years of track record to back it up, Microcap Insider is the choice for the growth-minded investor. Alex contributes his thoughts and insights regularly to Energy and Capital. To learn more about Alex, click here.
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