Aerographite

This Aerographite sounds like a wonderful new material with a  very promising future.  Let's consider some of it's properties.

• It's incredibly light - the lightest material  yet at just 0.2 mg per cc.
• It is highly resilient - crushing it by up to 95 per cent does not damage it at all.  In fact the action of pulling it back into shape may actually strengthen it.
• It's conductive and could be used as a battery.
• It's also super-hydrophobic, meaning that it will repel all moisture. 

Aerographite

Wow, a material that could be turned into a battery, is incredibly light, absolutely waterproof and can be subjected to high crushing pressure but remain undamaged?  Now, that has got to be worth investigating further.  Aerographite seems to address three of the major issues with current battery technology.  Batteries are easily damaged by knocks, they don't work well with water and they are usually very heavy.

Although the article doesn't give many clues about power capacities it does state that Aerographite may be useful for powering electric vehicles in the future.  That sounds like it must have good power delivery and duration since vehicles demand both.  Given that the batteries in conventional electrical vehicles are the heaviest components, this material could radically change the power to weight ratio required for propulsion.  Theoretically, a vehicle that used Aerographite batteries would be substantially lighter and could afford to sacrifice a percentage of its power yet still achieve the same or better performance.

There are countless other devices that are impacted by the weight of their batteries.  Assuming that the material is suitable for use in consumer gadgets like smartphones and video cameras.  Could such a technology perform the same function as an existing nickel metal hydride.   Replacing a set of heavy AA, C or D size batteries with a material that's lighter than air - now that has massive potential.

I'll be watching this one very carefully indeed.

Aerographite at Wikipedia

Extremetech article about Aerographite

More on Aerographite (Geekosystem)