John Goodenough was an American materials scientist and solid-state physicist who spent twenty-four years at MIT Lincoln Laboratory researching magnetism before moving to Oxford University in the late 1970s, where in 1980 he identified the lithium cobalt oxide cathode that made a higher-voltage, commercially practical rechargeable lithium battery possible, building on M. Stanley Whittingham's earlier intercalation cell. From 1986 until his death he was a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2019 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Whittingham and Akira Yoshino, becoming, at 97, its oldest laureate. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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From Whittingham's Unstable Cell to Goodenough's Fix
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M. Stanley Whittingham built the first rechargeable lithium battery in 1974 while working at Exxon, pairing a titanium disulfide cathode with an anode of metallic lithium. It worked, in the sense that it could store and release charge by moving lithium ions back and forth, but metallic lithium anodes have a habit of growing needle-like structures called dendrites as a battery cycles, and a dendrite that bridges the two electrodes can short the cell and start a fire. Whittingham's battery was too dangerous to sell. John Goodenough spent the years that followed looking for a cathode that could hold more charge at a higher voltage without depending on a dangerous anode, and in 1980 he found it: lithium cobalt oxide, a material stable enough and energetic enough to become the foundation of nearly every lithium battery built since. Goodenough had solved half the problem. The other half, a safe way to hold the lithium on the other side of the cell, took five more years and a different researcher entirely.
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Identified the cathode materials that made rechargeable lithium-ion batteries practical.
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Goodenough led the Oxford University group that identified lithium cobalt oxide as a usable battery electrode in 1980, working with Tokyo University's Koichi Mizushima.
Source Lithium Cobalt Oxide (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
In 1980 identified the lithium cobalt oxide cathode that enabled a higher-voltage, commercially practical rechargeable lithium battery, building on Whittingham's earlier cell; shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Source John Goodenough (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
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1. John Goodenough (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationIntroduction section, second paragraph
At 97 years old, he became the oldest Nobel laureate in history.
- Invented: The Lithium-Ion Battery
View the Source Lithium Cobalt Oxide (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationInvented: Lithium Cobalt OxideView the Source Frequently Asked Questions
What was John Goodenoughs contribution to the lithium-ion battery, and why did he win the Nobel Prize?
In 1980 he showed that an LixCoO2 cathode could double lithium-ion battery capacity, work recognized by the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
While heading the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Oxford, Goodenough found in 1980 that using LixCoO2 as a lightweight, high energy density cathode material could double the capacity of lithium-ion batteries, building on earlier work by M. Stanley Whittingham. Oxford refused to patent the invention, so he turned to the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, which accepted it on terms that paid the inventors no royalty. In 1990 that establishment licensed the patents to Sony. In 2019 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Whittingham and Akira Yoshino, and at 97 became the oldest Nobel laureate in history.
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