Graphene in amorphous metals for improved efficiency of components in electrical vehicles - G-Ame

Important results from the project

New material solutions are growingly sought after for the passive components in electric motors. An important topic in this context is to develop methods that enable increase of the electrical resistivity of the component materials from the current values. In this project, different functionalized graphene variants were developed in aim to evaluate their potential to tailor the electric properties of an amorphous metallic alloy. The experimentation showed that the graphene additions did not influence the electrical resistivity in needed extent.

Expected long term effects

The improvement of the performance of the electric system in electrical vehicles will contribute to a lower battery cost and will increase driving distances between the charges. A potential way to advance the performance of electrical system is to use amorphous materials that display attractive soft magnetic properties. As graphene does not provide sufficient potential to increase the electrical resistivity of amorphous metals new methods need to be developed for the modification of the electrical properties of amorphous and other powder based products.

Approach and implementation

Four different functionalized graphene variants were developed for an amorphous powder and their response in an amorphous bulk structure for the electrical was measured from solid samples. Iterative trials were made and the results showed that a highly imperfect graphene structure is not sufficient to increase the electrical resistivity of the metal matrix composite to a level needed in passive components. A specific test used for components in electric vehicles was included in evaluations.