Lithium-ion battery
A battery that charges and discharges as lithium ions shuttle between the positive and negative electrodes. Used everywhere from phones to electric cars.
In 1976 Stanley Whittingham showed an electrode that lets lithium slip in and out between layers of a crystal[1]. In 1980 John Goodenough, Koichi Mizushima and colleagues reported a lithium cobalt oxide positive electrode giving nearly 4 volts[2]; in 1985 Akira Yoshino used carbon for the negative electrode, eliminating metallic lithium, and Sony commercialised the battery in 1991. It won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
It is light and stores a lot of energy, but types using cobalt or nickel are expensive, and the flammable liquid electrolyte demands safety measures. Different positive-electrode materials are used for different jobs.
Related terms
- Lithium iron phosphateA type of lithium-ion battery with an iron-phosphate positive electrode. It uses no cobalt or nickel and is cheap, hard to ignite and long-lived.
- Sodium-ion batteryA battery that shuttles sodium ions instead of lithium. Its materials are plentiful and cheap, and it is entering use in grid storage.
- All-solid-state batteryA lithium-ion battery whose liquid electrolyte is replaced by a solid material. It is expected to be harder to ignite and to store more energy.