
At 97, lithium-ion battery pioneer says his work is not done - sohkamyung
https://cen.acs.org/people/profiles/Podcast-97-lithium-ion-battery/97/i35
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hwillis
I'm torn on Goodenough's (and his other main author, Maria Helena Braga)
academic contributions lately. They are doing a lot of investigation into
glass electrolytes, something that is very important and potentially the
future of li-ion. Sodium-ion batteries are also intriguing, although at this
point it's questionable they'd be cheaper.

Solid state batteries may eventually be much smaller (heavier, but more energy
per kg as well) and hopefully cheaper. Volume is one of the main drivers of
the cost of batteries, simply because it's proportional to the amount of
material processing. Increasing the specific energy (watt-hours per kg) of a
chemistry typically means you can cheaply tweak a material input and your
production line is suddenly far more productive.

Nobody has a great pitch on how we'll actually _make_ solid state batteries at
scale, but if we figure it out it'll probably also mean we can stop using so
many solvents. Currently both the anode and cathode are made from a _very_
carefully curated mix of very tiny spherical grains. Great pains are taken to
produce a properly sized mix of sizes as close to spherical as possible-
spheres make the chemical reaction as uniform as possible, and the size of the
grain determines the ratio of charge (volume) to the rate charge can flow
(surface area). It's critically important to tune those to match your
performance profile and minimize stress on the battery.

The solvents come in to the picture when you need to spread these materials
onto copper/aluminum sheets without letting it compress too much, so it mixes
with the electrolyte and doesn't crush the grains. You mix the material in
with volatile liquids, spread it ever so carefully to keep it even, and then
bake it under heat to drive off the solvent, which is recaptured. That solvent
is one of the greatest current health risks and pollution sources during the
production of batteries. Some is lost and just being around the stuff is not
great for you. Obviously you'll have a better recovery at LG than in some
random Chinese factory, but the pollution and risk to health is a loss for the
whole of humanity.

ANYWAY: Goodenough's/Braga's research output! It's... very sketchy. They've
published a number of papers that make extraordinary claims, some of which
implicitly break the conservation of energy. There's a real lack of rigor, and
a lot of questionable choices. They often present information that obscures
the real performance of their work- like showing a battery under maximum
discharge (without giving cycle life) and maximum cycle life (without giving
discharge). Matt Lacey did a really excellent review[1] of two 2017 and 2018
papers.

I haven't read his latest papers and I have to get to work unfortunately. If
you want to read them, Maria Helena Braga is _excellent_ about sharing her
work freely, and puts everything up [2]. It's a real credit to her and despite
my criticisms she is a great scientist because of it. I really, genuinely hope
to be excited by his research without seeing claims about ever-increasing
capacity, or batteries that plate lithium on the anode. I really hope he gets
a Nobel and I think that LCO (his original creation) absolutely deserves one.
May update this once I check out his latest. Meanwhile, here's a twitter album
of making a pouch battery! [3]

[1]: [http://lacey.se/2018/07/05/glass-battery-
part-2/](http://lacey.se/2018/07/05/glass-battery-part-2/)

[2]:
[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maria_Braga4](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maria_Braga4)

[3]:
[https://twitter.com/realscientists/status/106450287687207731...](https://twitter.com/realscientists/status/1064502876872077312)

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m-p-3
IPFS mirror

[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmdpuFwmHJUeMGAxqUnSS85BJSVJCN9c6fWDdZZ...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmdpuFwmHJUeMGAxqUnSS85BJSVJCN9c6fWDdZZmSeZrhs/)

[https://cloudflare-
ipfs.com/ipfs/QmdpuFwmHJUeMGAxqUnSS85BJSV...](https://cloudflare-
ipfs.com/ipfs/QmdpuFwmHJUeMGAxqUnSS85BJSVJCN9c6fWDdZZmSeZrhs/)

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ozymandias12
Care to share how you do this?

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bonestamp2
Scientific work aside, I'm more interested in how he's still this sharp at 97?

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timerol
Having your choice of thesis advisors be Enrico Fermi and Clarence Zener must
have been awesome, even if neither of them wanted grad students at the time.

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latchkey
Last year, he was still at it too!

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-battery-pioneer-who-at-
age-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-battery-pioneer-who-at-age-96-keeps-
going-and-going-1533807001)

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dmix
I've read this same story a few times now.

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random_savv
Clearly not good enough yet? :-)

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JudasGoat
In the interview, it's mentioned that tuition was $900 in 1940 at Yale. That
works out to $16,493.85 in "2019 Dollars". Yale costs $49,480 today. I
apologize for being off topic but I wonder if John was college age today, what
college would he have attended with very limited parental support, $35
specifically.

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filleokus
To continue the OT: According to [0] which quotes your $49,480 figure, the
average net cost (after all financial aids) is $18,319. Still higher than the
inflation adjusted price, and also disturbing that probably a large chunk of
that aid becomes a transfer from the government to the colleges.

I just checked it out because I remember that a very small part of even Ivy
League students pay sticker price.

[0]: [https://www.collegedroid.com/colleges/yale-
university/cost](https://www.collegedroid.com/colleges/yale-university/cost)

~~~
overcast
Even my alma mater is $45,244 a year, and most kids definitely do not get a
full ride like the big Ivy League schools. Education is absolutely ridiculous
now.

[https://www.rit.edu/admissions/aid/costs#2018-2019-estimated...](https://www.rit.edu/admissions/aid/costs#2018-2019-estimated-
cost)

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aetherspawn
His last name is hysterical for a scientist if I’ll be honest!

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taneq
For bonus points his middle initial is B.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Goodenough](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Goodenough)

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hwillis
Go Johnny go!

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taneq
(After demonstrating a lithium cobalt battery cathode in the early '80s)

"I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it."

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Infernal
It didn’t happen to be a 1.21GW battery did it?

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krustyburger
Charging stations? Where we’re going we don’t need charging stations.

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YeahSureWhyNot
not goodenough

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dangxiaopin
Goodenough!

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Endy
His work isn't done, but I'd say it's definitely good enough.

I'll get my coat.

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KibbutzDalia
He missed a chance to say it’s not “good enough”

