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M. Stanley Whittingham
Also Known As Michael Stanley Whittingham · M. Stanley Whittingham
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M. Stanley Whittingham is a British-American chemist and materials engineer who, while a researcher at Exxon in the mid-1970s, developed the first rechargeable lithium intercalation cell, using titanium disulfide as a host structure that lithium ions could move into and out of during charging and discharging. That intercalation chemistry became the founding principle of the lithium-ion battery. Since 1988 he has been a professor of chemistry and materials science at Binghamton University, and in 2019 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with John Goodenough and Akira Yoshino.
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From Whittingham's Unstable Cell to Goodenough's Fix
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M. Stanley Whittingham built the first rechargeable lithium battery in 1974 while working at Exxon, pairing a titanium disulfide cathode with an anode of metallic lithium. It worked, in the sense that it could store and release charge by moving lithium ions back and forth, but metallic lithium anodes have a habit of growing needle-like structures called dendrites as a battery cycles, and a dendrite that bridges the two electrodes can short the cell and start a fire. Whittingham's battery was too dangerous to sell. John Goodenough spent the years that followed looking for a cathode that could hold more charge at a higher voltage without depending on a dangerous anode, and in 1980 he found it: lithium cobalt oxide, a material stable enough and energetic enough to become the foundation of nearly every lithium battery built since. Goodenough had solved half the problem. The other half, a safe way to hold the lithium on the other side of the cell, took five more years and a different researcher entirely.
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Developed the first rechargeable lithium intercalation cell in the mid-1970s at Exxon, the founding chemistry behind the lithium-ion battery; shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with John Goodenough and Akira Yoshino.
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