On this page
The phone in your pocket runs on a lithium-ion battery, and its positive electrode is very likely a descendant of a material John Goodenough's group described in 1980. He was a physicist by training who turned to battery chemistry during the oil crisis of the 1970s, and he kept working in Texas for more than three decades after 1986. This post covers the problem he solved, how he reasoned about it, a worked capacity calculation, and what students can learn from him.
Who was John Goodenough?
The Nobel Prize facts page records that he was born on 25 July 1922 in Jena, Germany, to American parents. He studied mathematics at Yale, served as a meteorologist in the US Army during the Second World War, and earned a physics doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1952. He worked at MIT and Oxford, and from 1986 at the University of Texas at Austin. He died in Austin on 25 June 2023, aged 100.
The Royal Swedish Academy's popular account of the 2019 prize adds two details worth knowing. As a child he had significant problems learning to read, which drew him towards mathematics. And at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory he contributed to the development of random access memory (RAM).
What problem was he trying to solve?
In the 1970s Stanley Whittingham, then at Exxon, built a rechargeable lithium battery. Its cathode was titanium disulphide, a layered solid with spaces where lithium ions can sit, a process called intercalation. The Academy's account says it gave "more than two volts." Its anode was lithium metal, and on repeated charging thin whiskers of lithium grew until they short-circuited the cell, sometimes causing fires.
Goodenough had moved to Oxford as professor of inorganic chemistry. The Academy's account explains his reasoning: the cathode "could have a higher potential if it was built using a metal oxide instead of a metal sulphide." The more detailed scientific background puts it this way: with oxygen, a small electronegative element, taking up lithium ions would release more free energy and so give a higher cell voltage.
What did his group find?
In his Nobel autobiography, Goodenough writes that he asked "how much lithium can be extracted reversibly from a well-ordered LiMO2 layered oxide," choosing chromium, cobalt and nickel for M. He teamed the physicist Koichi Mizushima with his chemist post-doc Phillip Wiseman. "We found that over half of the lithium could be removed reversibly with cobalt or nickel," each giving an output near 4 V. The work was published in 1980 as LixCoO2: a new cathode material for batteries of high energy density in Materials Research Bulletin.
There was a second idea in it. Earlier batteries were built charged. A lithium cobalt oxide cathode starts full of lithium, so the cell is made discharged and charged afterwards. Goodenough recalls that battery companies were not interested in licensing it: "they could not imagine starting with a discharged cathode."
A worked example: how much charge can LiCoO₂ store?
When the battery charges, lithium ions leave the cathode: LiCoO₂ → Li₁₋ₓCoO₂ + x Li⁺ + x e⁻. Each lithium removed sends one electron round the circuit.
Molar mass of LiCoO₂ = 6.94 + 58.93 + 2(16.00) = 97.87 g/mol.
If every lithium could be removed, one mole gives one mole of electrons, 96,485 C.
Charge per gram: 96,485 ÷ 97.87 = 985.9 C/g.
Convert to milliampere-hours: 1 mAh = 3.6 C, so 985.9 ÷ 3.6 = 274 mAh/g.
That is an upper limit. Goodenough's group removed "over half" of the lithium reversibly. Using half gives about 137 mAh per gram of cathode material.
A second check, with sample numbers: a phone cell rated 4,000 mAh at 3.7 V stores 4.0 Ah × 3.7 V = 14.8 Wh of energy.
Common mistakes:
Using the molar mass of lithium alone. The whole cathode material has to be carried, so divide by the mass of LiCoO₂.
Mixing up mAh and Wh. mAh is charge; multiply by voltage to get energy.
Forgetting the factor 3.6. 1 mAh = 10⁻³ A × 3,600 s.
How did it become the battery in your phone?
Akira Yoshino at Asahi Kasei used Goodenough's cathode with a carbon anode, petroleum coke, which can also hold lithium ions. That removed lithium metal from the cell altogether. The scientific background records that a commercial lithium-ion battery was released in 1991, with a charging voltage up to 4.1 V and an energy density of about 80 Wh/kg. The 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared by Goodenough, Whittingham and Yoshino "for the development of lithium-ion batteries." Goodenough was 97 when it was announced.
For your syllabus, note that the JEE (Main) 2026 syllabus names "dry cell and lead accumulator, fuel cells" rather than lithium-ion cells, so treat this as background and check the current year's syllabus. The underlying ideas, electrode potential, Faraday's constant and capacity, are examinable; our post on batteries and fuel cells covers the cells NTA names.
If terms like intercalation or electrode potential still feel loose, the Fermi Concept Library covers every concept in physics and chemistry, each with its own lesson.
What can a student take from Goodenough?
A late start is not a barrier. He came to battery chemistry after decades in physics and magnetism.
Change one assumption. Building the cell discharged looked odd to industry and turned out to be the key.
Let reasoning narrow the search. Theory told him where to look; experiment confirmed it.
Tonight, repeat the capacity calculation for LiFePO₄ (molar mass about 157.8 g/mol) and compare it with LiCoO₂.
