You should know more about lithium battery inventor

It is a common thing, that the thing we use on our everyday lives are thing we have no idea where they came from. You don’t know their story or how much it cost to invent them or commercialize them. One of the things we think you should know about is the inventor of the lithium battery, John B. Goodenough. Not only is his name freaking amazing but he accomplished something that was the base to literally power all of our systems nowadays, from remotes to computers. Keep on reading to know everything there is to know about this awesome man and how he accomplished one of the most important inventions in the latest years.

What do you need to know about lithium battery inventor?

He was born in 1922 in Germany, which makes him 96 years old today, when he is still looking to innovate and create new technologies. He is currently a professor in the University of Texas, despite being 96 years old.

One of his first great accomplishments was in his thirties, when he developed a random-access memory. Later on, what he is most known for, he developed the lithium-ion rechargeable battery, during this years an along with the discovery of the battery came the discovery of several rules of magnetism. In 2012, at the age of 90, Goodenough identified the ceramic anode material that works for a solid oxide fuel cell when operating on natural gas.

The reason why John B. Goodenough is so recognized nowadays, is the fact that the combination and byproducts of his research benefit almost everyone in the world nowadays, and has worked as a foundation for almost every other discovery regarding lithium batteries. John B. Goodenough is still researching nowadays. Right now, his fields of study in the university are transition metal oxides, lithium-ion batteries, oxygen permeation membranes and fuel cells. This are the main fields in which he has based his research and has been working on very actively despite his age.

Currently, Goodenough is attempting to develop a specific chemistry that has the ability to solve the short comings that are inherent to lithium batteries today. His work is laying a very important foundation when it comes to the recent development of electric cars. He says the biggest problem of lithium batteries, which is precisely one of the disadvantages of electric cars, is that their charging time is too long. If you attempt to charge them fast, so far, the result is you get dendrites, which cause you problems. The solution for electric car owners (or electric devices owners really) is to charge them overnight when they are not using it. But if the future is really on electric cars, you don’t want them to charge overnight, you want them to charge on ten minutes while you go to the bank.

Goodenough recognized this long ago, and has been working on a solid-state lithium battery, so there are no liquid electrolytes, which are the main cause of the dendrites, this will also avoid issues like overheating, and allow for a very fast charge time.

Goodenough assure that the battery he is working on won’t take more than five years to be developed, and that though there have been many attempts to perfect it, research is going in the right direction.

What we can learn from lithium battery inventor?

When he was 23 years old and headed to study physics, a professor told him he was already too old to succeed since everyone who had discovered something that mattered was younger than him when they did. That’s part of the reason why, at 95, John B. Goodenough is not even close to being done with his work. He remains a professor of mechanical engineering and material science at University of Texas, and continues to work in the look for another big battery breakthrough. This is an important lesson to learn from the inventor of the lithium battery, he says he has no intention to stop working, it keeps him having a purpose, something to wake up to everyday. John Goodenough is the living proof that being old doesn’t mean you have to stop doing the things you are passionate about. He is still influencing the field and still working eight hours a day to achieve his goals. He is an example of how to grow old right.

Try to chase the trend of the lithium battery

The lithium battery is leaning towards, as mentioned above, solidification. The penetration of the battery growing in the industrial sector and expanding globally on a significant level. Industrial infrastructure is going to strongly rely on lithium batteries. Other trends on the field of the lithium battery are to increase the economic viability of energy storage, accompanied by the growing need to reduce our dependence on not renewable power sources. Pumped hydro storage dominates the market right now, and all battery scientists are attempting to change that, getting battery-based storage systems to develop faster than ever and decreasing the costs of producing them, while increasing their performance. Governments are giving out incentives, and batteries are focused on solar PV generators, in order to store the grabbed energy to be used at night. Lithium-ion batteries are being developed mostly in Asia-Pacific and solar home systems have increased in the African regions.

John B. Goodenough is working towards these factors and many other when identifying the problems, he thinks, today, are the ones that are affecting the development of the lithium battery the most, and how he is willing to solve them in order to further work towards these trends.  The field has been obtaining massive investments when it comes to lithium-ion batteries, and as this happens Goodenough and other scientists on the field are attempting to increase the performance of lithium batteries, exactly were the inventor of the battery is attempting to go with his project for a solid battery.