John Goodenough, The Scientist Who Helped Revolutionize Lithium-Ion Batteries, Dies at 100By Akshat Rathi / Bloomberg
June 27, 2023 9:40 AM EDT
John Goodenough, a pioneering researcher who helped transform lithium-ion batteries, died at the age of 100 on Sunday.
His inventions that helped develop modern computers and commercialize lithium-ion batteries touched every person’s life on the planet. Yet few knew him and his work didn’t bring him riches, though it did earn him a Nobel Prize very late in life. None of that bothered Goodenough, as he kept developing better batteries almost until the end of his life. His decades of work and innovation are now a cornerstone in the race to decarbonize the world’s vehicles and energy system. ...
After earning a PhD, Goodenough spent 24 years at the US Defense Department-funded Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His work in the 1950s and 1960s on compounds made of metals and oxygen helped progress the development of random access memory, or RAM, that serves as the center for a computer’s short-term data access....
It’s at Oxford that he turned his attention to batteries, after the oil crisis of 1973 sparked his interest in alternative forms of energy.
All batteries, from the very first one invented in 1799 by Alessandro Volta, are made up of three components: two electrodes — referred to as an anode and a cathode — with an electrolyte that allows the flow of charged atomic particles called ions between them. Lithium is the lightest metal in the universe, and a battery that can use lithium ions would be able to store the maximum amount of energy in the smallest amount of space.
An Exxon scientist named Stanley Whittingham had developed a battery that used lithium in the early 1970s. However, that very desire to make batteries energy dense caused Whittingham’s battery — which used lithium metal as anode and titanium sulfide as cathode — to catch fire.
With safety in mind, Goodenough turned to compounds that he had studied during his days developing random access memory: oxides. Working with two graduate students, he found that cobalt oxide served as a superior and safer cathode.
However, Oxford never patented Goodenough’s invention and he gave it away to a British nuclear research agency in the hope that it may be commercialized. ...
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