Technology never stops moving forwards. In the last few years, we have been witnesses of a period of unprecedented advances in hardware, software, networks, communication, AI, autonomy, and many other fields that now define the way we live and coexist every day.
But technology not only brings benefits, it comes with certain requirements that need to be met to enjoy those benefits. Bigger machinery needs more electricity, larger files need better connection, more simultaneous users require more stable networks, and so on.
But one need that seems to be overlooked is that smaller devices, from smartphones to medical devices, need to improve in aspects like longevity, power output and storage capacity. If technology keeps becoming more consuming and batteries remain untouched, the benefits become overshadowed by the inconvenience. This is what motivated the team at Ionic Industries to find solutions to this issue.
From the Ground Up
Ionic Industries is an Australia-based team with nearly eight years of experience in the development of materials, processes and products related to the industry of rechargeable energy storage. Their most innovative projects come from the materials they use to create their products, with the most relevant example being graphene electrodes.
Graphene is a material made of sheets of carbon with a thickness of one atom, which is later layered multiple times. This organization, and the properties of carbon atoms, make it an extremely efficient conductor and also a material that can store greater energy densities with smaller dimensions and weights, making it a perfect material to create small rechargeable units that provide much more power than usual.
Besides that, having such experience with the material allowed them to experiment and receive patents for a number of processes involving graphene, including an UV-assisted method of reduction of graphene oxide, a way for formulating graphene oxide ink, and a process for printing electrodes using the previous two processes.
Jumping Ahead
This division of the energy sector is contested by many competitors, all of which are catered to fulfill the needs of the wide variety of users. From large corporate clients and manufacturers looking for energy solutions, to individual consumers that just need a new couple of batteries.
Given that Ionic Industries is focusing on the material used to create these power storage units, they have the chance to access a large proportion of the market. And since this is a market that has been minimally affected by the current situation due to COVID-19, the growth potential for the next few years seems really promising.
Their objective is to provide their products to a wide variety of companies that represent sectors like communications, aeronautics, medical technology, transportation, construction and more, with specific applications like flexible printed electronics, support back-up systems, filtration membranes and energy storage.
This turns some of the largest companies in the world into potential clients, which helps Ionic Industries become a prospectively successful project that could eventually be the holders of the patent for the gold standard for energy storage and electrodes, a role that can only become more important as time goes on.