Chemistry Nobel Prize for ion age battery

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 has been awarded to three developers of the lithium-ion battery, which powers electric vehicles.

John B Goodenough, 97, from The University of Texas at Austin; M Stanley Whittingham from the Binghamton University, State University of New York; and Akira Yoshino from the Asahi Kasei Corporation, Tokyo and Meijo University, Nagoya, are recipients announced by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Adding that the trio created a rechargeable world, the academy says the lightweight, rechargeable and powerful battery is now used in everything from mobile phones to laptops and EVs.

“It can also store significant amounts of energy from solar and wind power, making possible a fossil fuel-free society.

“Lithium-ion batteries have also enabled the development of long-range electric cars and the storage of energy from renewable sources, such as solar and wind power.”

The announcement states the li-ion battery’s foundation was laid during the 1970s oil crisis.

Whittingham worked on developing methods that could lead to fossil fuel-free energy technologies and started to research superconductors, discovering an extremely energy-rich material which he used to create an innovative cathode in a lithium battery. However, the battery was too explosive to be viable.

Goodenough predicted the cathode would have even greater potential if it was made using a metal oxide instead of a metal sulphide. In 1980 he demonstrated that cobalt oxide with intercalated lithium ions can produce as much as four volts. This was an important breakthrough and would lead to much more powerful batteries.

With Goodenough’s cathode as a basis, Yoshino created the first commercially viable lithium-ion battery in 1985. Rather than using reactive lithium in the anode, he used petroleum coke, a carbon material that, like the cathode’s cobalt oxide, can intercalate lithium ions.

The result was a lightweight, hardwearing battery that could be charged hundreds of times before its performance deteriorated.

The advantage of lithium-ion batteries is that they are not based upon chemical reactions that break down the electrodes, but upon lithium ions flowing back and forth between the anode and cathode.

Lithium-ion batteries have revolutionised our lives since they first entered the market in 1991, the academy says.

“They have laid the foundation of a wireless, fossil fuel-free society, and are of the greatest benefit to humankind.”