Yoshino, Sony, and the Battery in Every Pocket

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Akira Yoshino found the missing half of the lithium-ion battery in 1985: an anode made from petroleum coke, a carbon material that could hold lithium ions between its atomic layers without ever needing metallic lithium at all. Paired with John Goodenough's lithium cobalt oxide cathode and an electrolyte based on carbonate esters, Yoshino's design was the first lithium-ion cell safe and stable enough to sell, and he patented it that same year. It took Sony and Asahi Kasei until 1991 to bring Yoshino's design to market as the world's first commercial rechargeable lithium-ion battery, but once it arrived it did not stay still: the same high energy density that made it safe to carry in a shirt pocket made the modern laptop, smartphone and electric vehicle possible in roughly that order. In 2019, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognized Whittingham, Goodenough and Yoshino together, a rare acknowledgment that a single invention can genuinely take three people, working decades apart, to finish.