For anyone not familiar with the highly advanced material known as graphene, it is the first two-dimensional substance that mankind has ever had the pleasure of working with. As anyone with a physics background can point out, most earthly materials have a 3D structure. Unlike these more conventional materials, graphene is comprised of only one layer of carbon-based atoms. In a nutshell, graphene is a single sheet made out of carbon and that sheet has the overall thickness of one solitary atom.

The material known as graphene is dramatically changing the smartphone world, as it has technological applications capable of revolutionizing not just smartphones, but the greater computer industry as a whole. Graphene is capable of being used for improved CPUs, longer-lasting batteries, foldable or flexible display screens, and more. Here are some of the ways that graphene can be used to improve smartphones.

 

  1. Foldable and Flexible Display Screens

Leading smartphone brands are already offering devices that possess display screens that can be folded or are extremely flexible. While these screens are made out of thin and flexible sheets of highly specialized plastic, it is widely thought that this plastic material will eventually be replaced by graphene. Kostya Novoselov, one of two people that discovered graphene, is currently working on a 2D LED screen prototype that uses metallic graphene and LEDs at the atomic level.

  1. Silicon Chip Replacement

The standard silicon chips are created in such a way to reduce heat accumulation and increase conductivity within computer processing systems. Several isolated studies have shown that silicon chips made out of graphene are able to achieve a super-conductive ability while reducing core operating temperatures by more than 55 degrees Fahrenheit or 13 degrees Celsius. While these graphene chips are still in the early stages of development, they are likely to be extremely revolutionizing in how they help computer technology evolve.

  1. Supercapacitor Batteries

Most batteries in this day and age contain electrochemical power cells such as lithium-ion. The next-generation smartphone batteries are likely to have supercapacitors abilities, which means that they will store energy within an isolated electrical field, rather than relying on a controlled reaction of mixing chemicals. Due to the fact that industrially synthesized graphene will be far cheaper than modern battery components, it will be much cheaper for battery manufacturers to create supercapacitor units which will greatly benefit smartphone consumers.

  1. Better Mobile Camera Sensors

A college professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore named Wang Qijie has become somewhat famous for recently inventing an extremely cheap and highly flexible photo sensor made entirely out of graphene. The graphene-based sensor is 1,000 times more sensitive to light than any of the run-of-the-mill camera sensors being used today. What is even more interesting is that graphene camera sensors use far less energy and they will be substantially cheaper to produce on an industrial manufacturing level.

  1. Faster Mobile-based Internet

A highly celebrated group of researchers from the universities of Bath and Exeter have recently proven that graphene used in optical switches would be able to deliver the internet 100 times faster than all currently available telecommunications infrastructure. The optical response rate of graphene is super high and if improved upon beyond what the researchers were able to model, it could eventually deliver internet speeds that are nearly unfathomable when considering the speeds that are available today. Several leading telecommunication companies are already exploring ways to incorporate test trials of graphene made components into their infrastructural networks.