M. Stanley Whittingham

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Sir Stanley Whittingham
Stanley Whittingham 2020.jpg
Whittingham in 2020
Born
Michael Stanley Whittingham

(1941-12-22) 22 December 1941 (age 82)
Nottingham, England
Nationality British, American
Alma mater New College, Oxford (BA, MA, DPhil)
Known for Lithium-ion battery
Awards Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2019)
Scientific career
Fields Chemist
Institutions Binghamton University
Thesis Microbalance studies of some oxide systems  (1968)
Doctoral advisor Peter Dickens
Other academic advisors Robert Huggins (post-doc)

Sir Michael Stanley Whittingham (born 22 December 1941) is a British-American chemist. He is a professor of chemistry and director of both the Institute for Materials Research and the Materials Science and Engineering program at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He also serves as director of the Northeastern Center for Chemical Energy Storage (NECCES) of the U.S. Department of Energy at Binghamton. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019 alongside Akira Yoshino and John B. Goodenough. [1] [2]

Contents

Whittingham is a key figure in the history of lithium-ion batteries, which are used in everything from mobile phones to electric vehicles. He discovered intercalation electrodes and thoroughly described intercalation reactions in rechargeable batteries in the 1970s. He holds the patents on the concept of using intercalation chemistry in high power-density, highly reversible lithium-ion batteries. He also invented the first rechargeable lithium metal battery (LMB), patented in 1977 and assigned to Exxon for commercialization in small devices and electric vehicles. Whittingham's rechargeable lithium metal battery is based on a LiAl anode and an intercalation-type TiS2 cathode. His work on lithium batteries laid the foundation for others' developments, so he is called the founding father of lithium-ion batteries. [3]

Education and career

Whittingham was born in Nottingham, England, on 22 December 1941. [4] [5] He was educated at Stamford School from 1951 to 1960, before going up to New College, Oxford to read chemistry. At the University of Oxford, he took his BA (1964), MA (1967), and DPhil (1968). [6] After completing his graduate studies, Whittingham became a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. [7] He worked 16 years for Exxon Research & Engineering Company [7] and four years working for Schlumberger prior to becoming a professor at Binghamton University. [6]

From 1994 to 2000, he served as the university's vice provost for research. [4] He also served as vice-chair of the Research Foundation of the State University of New York for six years. He is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering at Binghamton University. [7] Whittingham was named Chief Scientific Officer of NAATBatt International in 2017. [4]

Whittingham co-chaired the DOE study of Chemical Energy Storage in 2007, [8] and is a director of the Northeastern Center for Chemical Energy Storage (NECCES), a U.S. Department of Energy Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) at Binghamton. In 2014, NECCES was awarded $12.8 million, from the U.S. Department of Energy to help accelerate scientific breakthroughs needed to build the 21st-century economy. In 2018, NECCES was granted another $3 million by the Department of Energy to continue its research on batteries. The NECCES team is using the funding to improve energy-storage materials and to develop new materials that are "cheaper, environmentally friendly, and able to store more energy than current materials can". [9]

Research

Whittingham conceived the intercalation electrode. Exxon manufactured Whittingham's lithium-ion battery in the 1970s, based on a titanium disulfide cathode and a lithium-aluminum anode. [10] The battery had high energy density and the diffusion of lithium ions into the titanium disulfide cathode was reversible, making the battery rechargeable. In addition, titanium disulfide has a particularly fast rate of lithium ion diffusion into the crystal lattice. Exxon threw its resources behind the commercialization of a Li/LiClO4/ TiS2 battery. However, safety concerns led Exxon to end the project. Whittingham and his team continued to publish their work in academic journals of electrochemistry and solid-state physics. He left Exxon in 1984 and spent four years at Schlumberger as a manager. In 1988, he became Professor at the Chemistry Department, Binghamton University, U.S. to pursue his academic interests.

"All these batteries are called intercalation batteries. It’s like putting jam in a sandwich. In the chemical terms, it means you have a crystal structure, and we can put lithium ions in, take them out, and the structure’s exactly the same afterwards," Whittingham said. "We retain the crystal structure. That’s what makes these lithium batteries so good, allows them to cycle for so long." [10]

Lithium batteries have limited capacity because less than one lithium-ion/electron is reversibly intercalated per transition metal redox center. To achieve higher energy densities, one approach is to go beyond the one-electron redox intercalation reactions. Whittingham's research has advanced to multi-electron intercalation reactions, which can increase the storage capacity by intercalating multiple lithium ions. A few multi-electron intercalation materials have been successfully developed by Whittingham, like LiVOPO4/VOPO4. The multivalent vanadium cation (V3+<->V5+) plays an important role to accomplish the multi-electron reactions. These promising materials shine lights on the battery industry to increase energy density rapidly.

Whittingham received the Young Author Award from The Electrochemical Society in 1971, [11] the Battery Research Award in 2003, [12] and was elected a Fellow in 2004. [13] In 2010, he was listed as one of the Top 40 innovators for contributions to advancing green technology by Greentech Media. [14] In 2012, Whittingham received the IBA Yeager Award for Lifetime Contribution to Lithium Battery Materials Research, [15] and he was elected a Fellow of Materials Research Society in 2013. [16] He was listed along with John B. Goodenough, for pioneering research leading to the development of the lithium-ion battery on a list of Clarivate Citation Laureates for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry by Thomson Reuters in 2015. [10] [17] In 2018, Whittingham was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, "for pioneering the application of intercalation chemistry for energy storage materials." [18]

In 2019, Whittingham, along with John B. Goodenough and Akira Yoshino, was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the development of lithium-ion batteries." [1] [2]

Personal life

Stanley is married to Dr. Georgina Whittingham, a professor of Spanish at the State University of New York at Oswego. He has two children, Michael Whittingham and Jenniffer Whittingham-Bras. [19] [20]

Recognition

Books

Most-cited papers

(As of 2019: [28] )

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lithium-ion battery</span> Rechargeable battery type

A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery that uses the reversible intercalation of Li+ ions into electronically conducting solids to store energy. In comparison with other commercial rechargeable batteries, Li-ion batteries are characterized by higher specific energy, higher energy density, higher energy efficiency, a longer cycle life, and a longer calendar life. Also noteworthy is a dramatic improvement in lithium-ion battery properties after their market introduction in 1991: over the following 30 years, their volumetric energy density increased threefold while their cost dropped tenfold.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John B. Goodenough</span> American materials scientist (1922–2023)

John Bannister Goodenough was an American materials scientist, a solid-state physicist, and a Nobel laureate in chemistry. From 1986 he was a professor of Materials Science, Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is credited with identifying the Goodenough–Kanamori rules of the sign of the magnetic superexchange in materials, with developing materials for computer random-access memory and with inventing cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intercalation (chemistry)</span> Reversible insertion of an ion into a material with layered structure

Intercalation is the reversible inclusion or insertion of a molecule into layered materials with layered structures. Examples are found in graphite and transition metal dichalcogenides.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lithium metal battery</span> Non-rechargeable battery using lithium metal as anode

Lithium metal batteries are primary batteries that have metallic lithium as an anode. The name intentionally refers to the metal as to distinguish them from lithium-ion batteries, which use lithiated metal oxides as the cathode material. Although most lithium metal batteries are non-rechargeable, rechargeable lithium metal batteries are also under development. Since 2007, Dangerous Goods Regulations differentiate between lithium metal batteries and lithium-ion batteries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lithium iron phosphate</span> Chemical compound

Lithium iron phosphate or lithium ferro-phosphate (LFP) is an inorganic compound with the formula LiFePO
4
. It is a gray, red-grey, brown or black solid that is insoluble in water. The material has attracted attention as a component of lithium iron phosphate batteries, a type of Li-ion battery. This battery chemistry is targeted for use in power tools, electric vehicles, solar energy installations and more recently large grid-scale energy storage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lithium cobalt oxide</span> Chemical compound

Lithium cobalt oxide, sometimes called lithium cobaltate or lithium cobaltite, is a chemical compound with formula LiCoO
2
. The cobalt atoms are formally in the +3 oxidation state, hence the IUPAC name lithium cobalt(III) oxide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachid Yazami</span> Moroccan scientist

Rachid Yazami is a Moroccan scientist, engineer, and inventor. He is best known for his critical role in the development of the graphite anode for lithium-ion batteries and his research on fluoride ion batteries.

A potassium-ion battery or K-ion battery is a type of battery and analogue to lithium-ion batteries, using potassium ions for charge transfer instead of lithium ions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sodium-ion battery</span> Type of rechargeable battery

Sodium-ion batteries (NIBs, SIBs, or Na-ion batteries) are several types of rechargeable batteries, which use sodium ions (Na+) as their charge carriers. In some cases, its working principle and cell construction are similar to those of lithium-ion battery (LIB) types, but it replaces lithium with sodium as the intercalating ion. Sodium belongs to the same group in the periodic table as lithium and thus has similar chemical properties. However, in some cases, such as aqueous batteries, SIBs can be quite different from LIBs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Akira Yoshino</span> Japanese chemist (born 1948)

Akira Yoshino is a Japanese chemist. He is a fellow of Asahi Kasei Corporation and a professor at Meijo University in Nagoya. He created the first safe, production-viable lithium-ion battery, which became used widely in cellular phones and notebook computers. Yoshino was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019 alongside M. Stanley Whittingham and John B. Goodenough.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Bruce</span> British chemist

Sir Peter George Bruce, is a British chemist, and Wolfson Professor of Materials in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford. Between 2018 and 2023, he served as Physical Secretary and Vice President of the Royal Society. Bruce is a founder and Chief Scientist of the Faraday Institution.

Aluminium-ion batteries are a class of rechargeable battery in which aluminium ions serve as charge carriers. Aluminium can exchange three electrons per ion. This means that insertion of one Al3+ is equivalent to three Li+ ions. Thus, since the ionic radii of Al3+ (0.54 Å) and Li+ (0.76 Å) are similar, significantly higher numbers of electrons and Al3+ ions can be accepted by cathodes with little damage. Al has 50 times (23.5 megawatt-hours m-3) the energy density of Li and is even higher than coal.

Michael Makepeace Thackeray is a South African chemist and battery materials researcher. He is mainly known for his work on electrochemically active cathode materials. In the mid-1980s he co-discovered the manganese oxide spinel family of cathodes for lithium ion batteries while working in the lab of John Goodenough at the University of Oxford. In 1998, while at Argonne National Laboratory, he led a team that first reported the NMC cathode technology. Patent protection around the concept and materials were first issued in 2005 to Argonne National Laboratory to a team with Thackeray, Khalil Amine, Jaekook Kim, and Christopher Johnson. The reported invention is now widely used in consumer electronics and electric vehicles.

Research in lithium-ion batteries has produced many proposed refinements of lithium-ion batteries. Areas of research interest have focused on improving energy density, safety, rate capability, cycle durability, flexibility, and reducing cost.

Jeff Dahn is a Professor in the Department of Physics & Atmospheric Science and the Department of Chemistry at Dalhousie University. He is recognized as one of the pioneering developers of the lithium-ion battery, which is now used worldwide in laptop computers, cell-phones, cars and many other mobile devices. Although Dr. Dahn made numerous contribution to the development of lithium-ion batteries, his most important discovery was intercalation of Li+ ions into graphite from solvents comprising ethylene carbonate, which was the final piece of the puzzle in the invention of commercial Li-ion battery. Nevertheless, Dahn was not selected for the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which recognized only John Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino.

Linda Faye Nazar is a Senior Canada Research Chair in Solid State Materials and Distinguished Research Professor of Chemistry at the University of Waterloo. She develops materials for electrochemical energy storage and conversion. Nazar demonstrated that interwoven composites could be used to improve the energy density of lithium–sulphur batteries. She was awarded the 2019 Chemical Institute of Canada Medal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxides</span> Lithium-ion battery cathode material

Lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxides (abbreviated NMC, Li-NMC, LNMC, or NCM) are mixed metal oxides of lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt with the general formula LiNixMnyCo1-x-yO2. These materials are commonly used in lithium-ion batteries for mobile devices and electric vehicles, acting as the positively charged cathode.

Arumugam Manthiram is an Indian-American materials scientist and engineer, best known for his identification of the polyanion class of lithium-ion battery cathodes, understanding of how chemical instability limits the capacity of layered oxide cathodes, and technological advances in lithium sulfur batteries. He is a Cockrell Family Regents Chair in engineering, Director of the Texas Materials Institute, the Director of the Materials Science and Engineering Program at the University of Texas at Austin, and a former lecturer of Madurai Kamaraj University. Manthiram delivered the 2019 Nobel Lecture in Chemistry on behalf of Chemistry Laureate John B. Goodenough.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the lithium-ion battery</span> Overview of the events of the development of lithium-ion battery

This is a history of the lithium-ion battery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karim Zaghib</span> Algerian-Canadian electrochemist

Karim Zaghib is an Algerian-Canadian electrochemist and materials scientist known for his contributions to the field of energy storage and conversion. He is currently Professor of Chemical and Materials Engineering at Concordia University. As former director of research at Hydro-Québec, he helped to make it the world’s first company to use lithium iron phosphate in cathodes, and to develop natural graphite and nanotitanate anodes.

References

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