USA, Binghamton University, Chemistry and Materials Science are in the corridor of the laboratory building with the Department of Engineering.
"Professor Whittingham! Professor Whittingham!"
A voice sounded in the corridor, and a man holding two magazines in his hands rushed towards an old man who was walking in the corridor.
The old man heard the shout and turned his head to look.
After seeing the visitor, the old man smiled and said hello, "Oh! It's Mr. Graham. Why are you looking for me now?"
As for this old man, his name is known to everyone in the chemical world.
Michael Stanley Whittingham, Father of Lithium-ion Batteries.
He is a key figure in the history of lithium-ion batteries, having invented the first rechargeable lithium metal battery, which was patented in 1977.
Until 2019, he and two other important contributors to lithium batteries received Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
It can be said that when it comes to the history of lithium batteries, he is a key figure that cannot be avoided.
As for Gram who came to him, he was an executive from ExxonMobil.
ExxonMobil is a well-known company in the world. It mainly deals in energy business, especially in petroleum. It can be called one of the largest energy companies in the world. After all, its predecessor is Rockefeller family's Standard Oil Company.
Of course, in addition to the oil business, it also has a very broad business in energy such as batteries.
For example, Whittingham's patent was licensed to ExxonMobil.
There is a very deep cooperative relationship between the two, which has been maintained to this day, so Gram came to Whittingham.
After running in front of Whittingham, Gram took a few breaths and said, "Professor Whittingham, I finally see you. Have you read the latest issue of "JACS" and "ACS Nano"?"
"Huh? Has the new issue of "JACS" been released? I haven't read it yet. As for "ACS Nano", I don't pay much attention to Nanotechnology."
The old man asked, "Mr. Graham came to me, is it because there are any important results in these two journals?"
"Yes!"
The Mr. Graham nodded, and then handed the two magazines in his hand to the Professor Whittingham.
Then I opened the table of contents and marked the three papers above.
"Look at these three papers! Do these three new materials represent lithium-sulfur solid-state batteries?"
Upon hearing this, Professor Whittingham immediately narrowed his eyes.
"Lithium-sulfur solid-state battery? Are you kidding me?"
"Of course I'm not joking! Otherwise, I wouldn't have come here to find you!"
Gram said.
Whittingham glanced at the titles of the three papers.
A carbon nanoporous material that can effectively inhibit the growth of lithium dendrites?
Real or fake?
Regarding the problem of lithium dendrites, have you found a method to suppress it?
Fake?
But considering that the journal this paper was published in was "ACS Nano", he had to temporarily put aside his doubts.
"ACS Nano" is the top journal in the field of nanomaterials. Its impact factor of 15 is higher than "JACS". The credibility of papers published in this journal is still quite high.
Which research team produced this material?
He immediately looked at the author of the paper, and then was stunned.
Xiao Yi?
Of course he knew the name. He had seen the electron-interface reaction migration model developed by Xiao Yi some time ago.
At the beginning, he also gave a very positive evaluation of this model. "How electrons will behave at the interface has always been a major problem that has plagued the academic community. If this problem can be solved, it will play a key role in our analysis of related materials, especially in the analysis of electrochemistry. Fortunately, the electron-interface reaction migration model has successfully solved this problem for us."
And how long had it passed before, under his leadership, such results were actually achieved?
Look at the two papers in "JACS" again.
A sulfur electrode with extremely excellent performance in terms of cycle efficiency and conductivity is actually vulcanized polyacrylonitrile?
There is also a modified lithium phosphorus sulfur chloride solid electrolyte, the interface impedance... and the ionic conductivity...
He became more and more shocked until finally, he immediately said to Gram: "Let's go to the laboratory now. I'm going to start the experiment now!"
Then he walked to the laboratory without saying a word.
He is over eighty years old, and the steps under his feet seem to have become stronger at this time.
Gram quickly followed and shouted at the same time, "Professor, slow down! Wait for me!"
Soon, following the steps given in the paper, he synthesized these three materials and began to prepare batteries.
As the measurement results come out.
"The energy density is as high as more than 900 watt hours per kilogram!"
Looking at this result, Whittingham was extremely shocked.
Gram next to him also stared.
He couldn't help but murmured, "This energy density... is two or three times higher than the current most advanced batteries, right?"
"More than that?" Whittingham pointed to the battery he assembled and said, "Look at how crude this battery is. I bet that if the structure is further optimized, the energy density can be increased by four to five hundred!"
"Furthermore, this kind of data on paper actually doesn't mean much from a scientific research perspective. What you need to know is that whether it is a lithium-sulfur battery or a solid-state battery, the most important thing is its feasibility. Being able to build it and make it run stably is the key."
"Think about it, the previous lithium-sulfur battery or solid-state battery technologies, even if they are manufactured, can they be used? Can they be safely put into the consumer market?"
Whittingham shook his head and said, "Definitely not. Even if it has a certain degree of safety, using technology that expires after half a year will only get abuse from consumers."
"Now, these three technologies are completely feasible, and they can fully withstand the test of consumers."
He sighed and said, "I can bet you that within two years at the latest, the battery market will undergo major changes. Lithium-ion batteries should now account for 60% of the battery market, right?"
Gram said, "According to our company's research results, it is already 70%."
Whittingham was slightly surprised. "Is it that high?"
But then he shook his head, not too surprised.
With the development of various human technologies to this day, in terms of batteries, there is really no other material that can replace the superior performance of lithium batteries.
As for the envisioned magnesium-ion batteries, aluminum-ion batteries, etc., compared with lithium batteries, their theoretical performance is not that good.
Therefore, it is quite normal that the market share of lithium batteries is getting higher and higher. In the consumer electronics market alone, there are basically only lithium batteries. As for electric vehicles, there is also the heresy of fuel cells, but basically only Japanese cars and South Korea cars use this technology. After all, Japan and South Korea have invested a very huge cost in fuel cells, especially Japan. It is almost a classic gamble on national destiny.
It's just a pity that they all failed in their bets, and they are not as good as the lithium batteries developed by China.
Then Whittingham said, "Believe me, now that lithium-sulfur solid-state batteries are born, it is estimated that within five years, they can capture 20% of the market. As production costs drop in the future and prices become cheaper, the remaining market size will be quickly replaced."
"Xiao Yi should have applied for patents for these three technologies, right?"
Gram nodded and said in a bad tone, "According to the results of our investigation, we have indeed applied."
Whittingham shook his head. "It seems that the battery market in the future will completely become Chinese."
Gram remained silent and did not refute, because he knew very well that what Whittingham said was indeed true.
In the current battery market, Linde Era and Diaby from China account for more than 50% of the total share, ranking first and second in the world respectively. Among the top ten companies, Chinese companies directly occupy six seats, accounting for more than two-thirds of the global market share.
Now, even lithium-sulfur solid-state batteries have appeared in China, which puts energy companies outside China like ExxonMobil feeling great pressure.
Of course, Gram, as an executive of ExxonMobil, is also very clear about the reasons for this situation.
After all, the reason why China wants to vigorously develop new energy sources can be considered to be their fault.
"Then Professor, I won't disturb you anymore. I'm going back to the company first. I have to report the situation."
"Okay, walk slowly."
Whittingham nodded.
After standing at the door of the laboratory and watching Gram leave with his hands on his hips, he returned to the laboratory, picked up the experimental data, and looked at it with admiration.
As for the market size, he doesn't care at all. After all, he is over 80 years old, and these things are no longer worthy of his attention.
He was satisfied enough to see someone making such great progress in lithium battery technology again.
Time passed quickly. As these three papers were discovered and the lithium-sulfur solid-state battery technology was successfully verified, the battery market experienced huge fluctuations.
In the stock market, the share prices of battery-related companies have fallen rapidly.
These companies also held meetings overnight to discuss plans to deal with this new technology.
But there is no doubt that they all know very well that no matter how hard they think about the response plan, there is no good way to deal with this kind of thing.
Who makes people too advanced?
Unless they can also achieve a major breakthrough in this area of technology.
However, breakthroughs are not so easy to achieve. Otherwise, if they have invested so much money in this area over the years, wouldn't they have achieved a lot of results long ago?
Of course, for the academic community, these three results can be said to have exploded the mentality of many research groups.
Xiao Yi directly produced such awesome materials, wouldn't it make their topic useless?
People have already been able to put it into practical use, but they are still under laboratory conditions.
The results that could have been published in "nature" and "science" may now only be published in the general section 1, and the papers that were originally published in the general section may only be published in the third or fourth sections.
For a time, the academic community was also wailing.
Some of these research teams were supported by some large companies. As soon as this incident came out, these research teams were scolded by the company leaders with words such as "a meal bucket" and then disbanded on the spot.
What can they do?
Scientific research is like this, winner takes all, and with a major technological breakthrough, there will inevitably be a lot of feathers left behind.
There can only be one person standing on the cusp of the times.
However, some are happy and some are worried, which is a tragedy for other companies and laboratories, but for consumers, this is great news.
There are quite a few people discussing this matter on various social platforms.
There are quite a lot of people discussing Weibo and Zhihu in China. After all, China is the leader in the battery industry, so it is normal for many people to discuss it.
On Zhihu, related issues even ranked among the top three on the hot list.
[The team led by Xiao Yi has successfully made a very significant breakthrough in battery technology. Three related papers have been published in two top journals, "JACS" and "ACS Nano". How do you interpret this news?]
When I clicked on this question, the first-ranked respondent was a researcher specializing in materials, electrochemistry and other fields. He was also a professor at Tsinghua University.
[Thank you for the invitation, I finally encountered a problem that matches my major.
Regarding how to interpret this news, I only need to say one thing: the battery life of the mobile phone you are holding in your hand will be guaranteed to increase two or three times in the future. Today's mobile phones are generally 5000mah, so in the future it may be 15000mah, or even 20000mah, and if you want to use a battery with this kind of battery life, you probably only need to wait another year.
Of course, you may be holding a laptop or a tablet or other device in your hand now, but it is still true that you will soon be able to use a laptop or tablet with three or four times the current battery life.
Especially laptop computers. If you are currently using a Windows computer, have you ever envied the powerful battery life of a Mac laptop? Don't worry, you will soon be able to use a Mac with a battery life that is even better than the current Mac notebook. Of course, if you are currently using a Mac computer, then don't worry, you will soon be able to use a Mac with a battery life of perhaps more than three days.
Of course, there are also friends who want to drive pure electric vehicles. In the near future, the range of pure electric vehicles can easily reach more than 1,000 kilometers. Even if it is a high-performance pure electric vehicle, 2,000 kilometers is completely possible!
Moreover, the originally criticized low-temperature power loss problem of electric vehicles will no longer be a problem with the support of lithium-sulfur solid-state batteries. According to the test results of major laboratories, even in extreme environments such as minus 50 degrees, it can maintain 80% performance, and you must know The truth is that gasoline vehicles may have problems starting in low-temperature environments, but electric vehicles do not have this problem. Therefore, to a certain extent, pure electric vehicles using lithium-sulfur solid-state batteries will beat gasoline vehicles in all aspects except that they cannot run with refueling.
Of course, if you use a hybrid car, just pretend I didn't say anything.
But it is undeniable that pure electric vehicles will truly achieve zero emissions and will truly help improve the environment, without affecting people's travel experience at all.
All in all, the lithium-sulfur solid-state battery developed by Professor Xiao Yi will become a technology that truly changes people's lifestyles!]