Why did we choose lithium as an energy carrier to create a lithium battery?

Everyone will ask, why choose lithium as an energy carrier?

Well, although we don't want to review the knowledge of chemistry, this problem must go to the periodic table to find the answer. Fortunately, do you still remember the periodic table?

To be a good energy carrier, store and carry more energy in as small a volume and weight as possible. Therefore, the following basic conditions need to be met:

1) The relative mass of the atom is small

2) Strong ability to gain and lose electrons

3) The electronic transfer ratio is high

Based on these three basic principles, the elements above the periodic table are better than the elements below, and the elements on the left are better than the elements on the right. For initial screening, we can only find materials in the first and second cycles of the periodic table: hydrogen, helium, lithium, cesium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, and antimony. Excluding inert gases and oxidants, only five elements of hydrogen, lithium, helium, boron, and carbon remain.

Hydrogen is the best energy carrier in nature, so research on hydrogen fuel cells has been in the ascendant, representing a very promising direction in the battery field. Of course, ifspecial fission technology can make major breakthroughs in the next few decades and can be miniaturized or even miniaturized, portablespecial fuel cells will have broad room for development.

Then there's lithium, and lithium is chosen as a battery based on the relative best we can find of all the elements on earth today (beryllium is a rare metal among rare metals because there are so few of them). The technical route between hydrogen fuel cells and lithium-ion batteries is in full swing in the field of electric vehicles. Probably because of these two elements, it is a better energy carrier that we can find now. Of course, there are also many commercial interests and even political games. These are not the areas to be discussed in this article.

By the way, the energy sources that already exist in nature and are widely used by human beings, such as oil, natural gas, coal, etc., are mainly composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and other elements (in the first and second periods of the periodic table of the elements). Therefore, both natural selection and human "design" are ultimately the same.

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