Goodenough was far from predestined to be one of the most influential scientists of our time. As a child, he struggled with reading due to dyslexia and would have to forego college due to the Second World War. After the war, he was selected by the army to study physics at the University of Chicago. In 1952, at the age of 30, Goodenough finished a PhD in Physics under the supervision of Clarence Zener at the University of Chicago.
He ended up at the MIT Lincoln Lab where he helped create one of the first forms of computer memory. By the early 1970s, it became apparent that energy, especially that in the form of fossil fuels, could be subject to bottlenecks which would later manifest in the oil shocks of the late 1970s. This motivated Goodenough into shifting his focus towards battery technologies.
This inspired Goodenough to pursue the development of an improved lithium-based battery. Between 1976 and 1986, Goodenough was head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Oxford. It was here that he and his team showed how oxide cathodes would perform in a Li-ion battery and would be safer than the previous lithium designs.
Goodenough''s solution was a layered sulfide cathode that allowed the insertion and extraction of large amounts of lithium between its layers (a process scientists call intercalation). Goodenough reasoned a layered oxide cathode would react similarly, providing a higher voltage that would enable a significantly higher energy density
However, Goodenough faced another problem: Lithium is inherently unstable and batteries were, until then, always produced charged, ready to power electronics once out of the factory.
In 1986, he took the Virginia H. Cockrell Centennial Chair of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, where he continued his studies of both the fundamental properties of transition-metal oxides and the development of materials for alternative electrochemical technologies to realize a sustainable energy supply for modern society.
In 2001, Goodenough received the Japan Prize, a highly prestigious award similar to the Nobel Prize that is awarded each year for achievements in science. He was awarded the prize thanks to his crucial role in the discovery of materials critical to the development of Li-ion rechargeable batteries. In 2011, then-president Barack Obama awarded John Goodenough with the National Medal of Science for Engineering.
Goodenough has received some recognition for his role, but he is still undoubtedly underappreciated and he gave up a fortune by not pursuing patent claims to the Li-ion battery.
Goodenough, now a 96-year old professor at the University of Texas at Austin, never stopped working. For him, the Li-ion model just wasn''t good enough, prompting him to return to the forefront of battery development in December 2016 when his team published a paper on the glass battery, a type of solid state battery that uses a glass electrolyte and lithium or sodium metal electrodes, with the cathode being made of carbon. This type of battery has received some skeptical response from the scientific community, although his reputation has negated some of it.
John B. Goodenough is a remarkable scientist, a devoted and intelligent researcher who, despite providing the battery behind the modern electric appliance revolution, has remained humble and focused. He has gained little wealth from his work, and he is not seeking fame nor popularity, but when asked what he would like to see from humanity, he had this to say:"I don''t want man in his greed to exploit the resources of earth to turn what should be a garden into a desert."
We salute Goodenough for his inventions and at FUERGY, we promise to make the best use of his invention by making it play a crucial role in reducing carbon emissions and fossil fuel dependency, and, at the end in closing the gap between ecological and economical.
In our next article on batteries, we will look at current developments of Li-ion batteries and how companies are already working on the new and improved versions of Goodenough''s invention so don''t forget to visit our blog.
In the late 1970s, a team of global scientists began developing what would become the lithium-ion battery, a type of rechargeable battery that would eventually power everything from portable electronics to electric vehicles and mobile phones.
This week, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 was awarded to three scientists, John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino, for their work in developing this battery.
According to the official Nobel Prize organization, "this lightweight, rechargeable and powerful battery is now used in everything from mobile phones to laptops and electric vehicles. It can also store significant amounts of energy from solar and wind power, making possible a fossil fuel-free society."
During the oil crisis in the 1970s, Stanley Whittingham, an English chemist working for Exxon mobile at the time, started exploring the idea of a new battery – one that could recharge on its own in a short amount of time and perhaps lead to fossil-free energy one day.
In his first attempt, he tried using titanium disulfide and lithium metal as the electrodes, but the combination posed several challenges, including serious safety concerns. After the batteries short-circuited and caught on fire, Exxon decided to halt the experiment.
However, John B. Goodenough, currently an engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin, had another idea. In the 1980s, he experimented using lithium cobalt oxide as the cathode instead of titanium disulfide, which paid off: the battery doubled its energy potential.
Five years later, Akira Yoshino of Meijo University in Nagoya, Japan, made another swap. Instead of using reactive lithium metal as anode, he tried using a carbonaceous material, petroleum coke, which led to a revolutionary finding: not only was the new battery significantly safer without lithium metal, the battery performance was more stable, thus producing the first prototype of the lithium-ion battery.
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