A Nobel for Gadgets! Lithium-Ion Batteries Win the Prize

While the Nobel prizes can sometimes dive into foundational but seemingly rarified corners of the sciences, Wednesday morning’s announcement of the prize for chemistry reached into billions of people’s pockets—and homes, offices, workshops, cars … pretty much the entire infrastructure of modern life. For their invention of the rechargeable lithium-ion battery, key to everything from mobile phones to electric cars, John B. Goodenough of UT Austin, M. Stanley Wittingham of SUNY Binghamton, and Akira Yoshino of Miejo University will take home medals and a share of $906,000.

“Amazing. Surprising,” Yoshino said by phone at the press conference announcing the prize. Which, sure, maybe, though a September panel sponsored by the American Chemical Society predicted a win for Goodenough and lithium-ion rechargeables; he and the tech have been a longtime favorite. (The genome-editing technology Crispr was a dark horse.)

Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announce the winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Photograph: NAINA HELEN JAMA/Getty Images

“I don’t know if they had been waiting for the news for years, but they were very happy,” said Göran Hansson, a physician and member of the Nobel Committee, of Wittingham and Yoshino. The committee hadn’t yet reached Goodenough, Hansson said, who at 97 years old becomes the oldest living Nobel laureate.

Lithium-ion batteries have become a staple in modern electronics. Introduced commercially in 1991, their light weight and high energy efficiency let electronics manufacturers stuff them into mobile phones, portable computers, and cameras. But since the batteries are also stackable into large arrays and can undergo hundreds of discharge–charge cycles, they’re also at the heart of electric bikes and cars like Priuses and Teslas, and they have become dependable parts of sustainable, green energy. Sources of energy like wind or solar don’t emit planet-killing greenhouse gases, but they’re less dependable than fuels derived from oil. Lithium-ion batteries can charge when the wind turns turbines and the sun drops photons on photoelectric cells, and then discharge when they don’t—maintaining even distribution on the electrical grid. One estimate puts the size of the world market at $36 billion, with the possibility of hitting almost $110 billion by 2026.

All batteries work roughly the same way. Electrons flow from a negative electrode called an anode through a material, often a liquid, called an electrolyte, to a positive electrode, the cathode. Pump that flow through a circuit and it’ll power a device. In the mid-1970s, Wittingham—then working for Exxon—figured out how to use the ultralight, highly reactive metal lithium in the anode. That was great; not only does lithium readily give up electrons, but applying charge to the new battery would restore them. Unfortunately, that version of the battery also tended to blow up.

In 1980 Goodenough and his team, working at Oxford, figured out that a cobalt oxide cathode would make for a more stable battery; later that decade Yoshino’s group learned to use more complicated carbon-based materials in electrodes that’d still let lithium ions nestle inside and flow through the battery. Yoshino also developed a way to test the batteries to show that, unlike earlier versions, they wouldn’t catch fire—at least not as easily as the early versions. His high-tech approach: Drop something heavy on it.

As common as they are, Li-ion batteries still have their problems. They’re tough, sure, but problems with the software that controls them or damage to their outer case can still let lithium ignite; that same electrochemical tendency to give up its electrons makes it highly reactive with oxygen, which is just fancy talk for “burns real good.” That’s why you’re not allowed to stow them in airplane luggage anymore.

Also, the world would love a better battery, even lighter, even smaller, with even more powerful battery materials, that charges faster—maybe replace the graphite with silicon, or sub out the liquid electrolyte for a polymer. It’d be nice to not have to rely on lithium at all, since mining the stuff is about as environmentally friendly as any other extractive industry, which is to say, not so much.

Still, since you’re probably reading this on a gadget with a Li-ion battery making it go, the win makes sense. Li-ion batteries continue to improve as researchers hunt for alternatives, but the future-y world of wireless earbuds, mobile phones, and laptops wouldn’t exist without lithium-ion. And as governments and industries look for ways to harness power that don’t exacerbate an ongoing climate crisis, battery tech will be key. “I think we are only at the beginning of that development when it comes to environmental effects, for example transportation and powering the grid,” said Olof Ramström, a Nobel Committee member, after the announcement. “Not just lithium-ion, but also other types of batteries that may be discovered in the future.” Sometimes knowledge really is power.

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