Goodenough Develops Glass Battery with 3 Times Capacity of Lithium Battery

John Goodenough, the "Father of Lithium Battery" and one of the winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, recently revealed that he has developed a sodium glass battery whose storage capacity is three times that of the current lithium battery.

The glass battery is a type of solid-state battery. It uses a glass electrolyte and lithium or sodium metal electrodes. The battery was invented by John B. Goodenough, inventor of the lithium cobalt oxide and lithium iron phosphate electrode materials used in the lithium-ion battery, and Maria H. Braga, an associate professor at the University of Porto and a senior research fellow at Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas. The paper describing the battery was published in Energy & Environmental Science in December 2016.

According to the paper and patent, the lithium- or sodium glass battery uses glass doped with alkali metals such as sodium or lithium as the electrolyte (the medium that ions pass through the anode and cathode during charging and discharging), and its storage capacity is three times that of a comparable lithium-ion battery. After being used to configure electric vehicles, it can be fully charged in minutes instead of hours. The new battery also has the characteristics of safety, long life and low cost, and no longer needs to rely strictly on lithium for development.

John Goodenough was born in Germany on July 25, 1922. He is a professor and solid physicist at the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Texas at Austin. He is the inventor of lithium cobalt oxide, lithium manganate, and lithium iron phosphate cathode materials, as well as one of the founders of lithium-ion batteries.

After ninety years of age, Prof. Goodenough is still struggling on the front line of scientific research and is committed to developing high-density, high-security solid-state batteries to solve human potential energy problems. In an interview recently, he said: "I don't want to do development. I don't want to be going into business. I'm 94. I don't need the money."

Solid-state batteries such as glass battery are seen as the next big breakthrough in battery technology instead of lithium battery, not only because of the lower weight or higher energy density but also because of low risk of fire or explosion.

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