How did the indispensable lithium battery come from?

When it comes to batteries, everyone is familiar with them. This year, batteries have become a necessity in life, and ordinary people cannot do without batteries in their daily lives.

For example, the mobile phone that accompanies you for the longest time 24 hours a day needs a battery, the laptop for work needs a battery, even the mobile speaker for the square dancer to dance, and the old man walks on his waist. The radios and other electrical appliances, including many artificial battery cars, require batteries. Even buses, taxis, online car-hailing, private cars, etc., all require batteries to drive a considerable part, and most of these batteries that need to be charged are lithium batteries.

Although the commercial use of lithium batteries has a history of nearly 30 years, from the very beginning of laptops, cameras and other devices to the present, lithium batteries are truly popular in different fields It is only a matter of the last ten years to enter the lives of every common people. It is precisely because of the light weight, convenient carrying, easy charging and other powerful functions of lithium batteries that our daily food, clothing, housing, transportation and life are enriched.

Then how the lithium battery was invented has something to do with the oil crisis in the 1970s. In 1960, the world established an organization called OPEC. At that time, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other countries met in Baghdad and established an Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The main purpose is to coordinate and coordinate oil prices and oil policies to safeguard their respective interests. Coupled with the outbreak of the Fourth Middle East War in the 1970s, various reasons have caused the price of a barrel of oil to rise several times. This is why scientists in Europe and the United States began to develop lithium batteries in order to cope with the oil crisis that may reappear in the future.

In 1976, there was a British scientist named Stanley Whitingham who worked at the battery of Exxon Petroleum Company (not yet called ExxonMobil) Work in the laboratory and start to develop the prototype of the lithium battery. But it is only theoretical, mainly because lithium is a very active metal, easy to explode, and will burn when exposed to water. At that time, the chemical properties of lithium batteries were unstable. Whether they were exposed to heat or pressure, they were prone to dangers and could not be used for commercial purposes. However, the principle of lithium batteries proposed by Stanley Wittingham has become one of the cornerstones of the commercialization of lithium batteries in the future.

In 1980, Goodenough, a chemistry teacher at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, developed lithium ion after four years of research on the basic principles of Stanley Whitingham. The cathode material of rechargeable batteries, lithium cobalt oxide, can be used as the cathode material of lithium-ion batteries. This kind of material solves the problem of easy explosion, can be used in fixed and mobile use, and has a smaller volume and a larger capacity. Two years later, in 1982, Goodenough developed another cheaper and more stable material in the laboratory. It is called lithium manganate, and lithium manganate batteries are also very common today.

In 1985, a Japanese scientist Akira Yoshino developed the first commercial lithium-ion battery based on Goodenough’s research. The lithium-ion battery in the laboratory has officially become a commercially available battery.

However, it was the Japanese company Sony that applied for the patent of lithium-ion batteries. At that time, the lithium-ion battery was developed and no one in the UK was willing to accept it. Because the metal of lithium batteries is lively and prone to explosion accidents, British scientists and British chemical companies can exaggerately talk about lithium discoloration, and Oxford University is unwilling to apply for a patent for this. But at that time, Sony took over this recognized hot potato and created a new lithium battery with its own negative electrode material.

In 1992, Sony commercialized Akira Yoshino’s and Goodenough’s Ru0026D bases for home cameras. In the era when lithium was talked about discoloration, lithium batteries were not widely accepted by society. This application did not bring huge commercial profits to Sony. Instead, the part that developed lithium battery products became a money-losing department.

Until 1994 and 1995, Dell Computer Company purchased Sony’s lithium battery technology and applied Sony’s lithium battery technology to notebook computers. Dell notebooks also rely on lithium battery technology. The longer battery life makes a fortune. Lithium batteries also began to be gradually accepted at that time, applied to different products, and entered the daily lives of ordinary people.