Lithium Made the Modern Battery. It Also Made It Burn.

The best battery we have is a roll of coated foil that can catch fire, and the fire is built into the chemistry. This is the story of the anode: lithium metal, the dendrite that grows through the separator, and the carbon that replaced the metal without removing the risk. It follows one problem from a dead frog and a lemon in 1800 to the cell in your pocket, through Exxon's abandoned programme, Oxford's unpatented cathode and a Japanese camcorder. Every step is a compromise, and the film ends on the one nobody has escaped. Chapters 0:00 CH01 — THE ROLL 2:13 CH02 — THE LADDER 4:32 CH03 — THE DENDRITE 6:38 CH04 — THE CARBON 8:49 CH05 — THE SKIN 11:04 CH06 — THE FIRE 13:21 CH07 — THE SUPPLY 15:46 CH08 — THE TRADE Sources Every figure the film speaks is attributed on screen. Each result is credited to the source that produced it: Veritasium (YouTube), The Perfect Battery Material Is Dangerous — the teardown framing; 1970s oil shock and Exxon's battery programme … Nobel Prize Outreach, Press release: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 — the prize to Goodenough, Whittingham and Yoshino "for the development of lithium-ion batteries"; Whittingham's titanium-disulfide cathode … Nobel Prize Outreach, John B. Goodenough – Facts — born 7 July 1922; aged 97 at the 2019 prize … IEEE Spectrum, Who Really Invented the Rechargeable Lithium-Ion Battery? — Whittingham's "2.4-volt cell" with a titanium-disulfide cathode in the 1970s; Goodenough's "4-volt lithium cobalt oxide" in 1980 … U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Charging Up the Development of Lithium-Ion Batteries — Whittingham discovered how to store lithium ions within the layers of a disulfide material; Exxon patented a lithium-based battery based on his design in 1976 … The Electrochemical Society, M. Stanley Whittingham — Whittingham joined Exxon Research and Development in 1972; he studied titanium disulfide … Google Patents (US Patent and Trademark Office record), US4357215A — Fast ion conductors — the cathode family Li_xCo_yO_2; the abstract states that its open-circuit voltages are "nearly twice as large as those found for the known ion conductor Li_aTiS_2" … Google Patents (USPTO record), US4668595A — Secondary battery — the 1985 priority date; Asahi Kasei … Battery Design, Sony Lithium Ion Batteries — world's first commercialized LiB, … — Sony's 1991 lithium-ion battery powered the CCD-TR1 camcorder; the cell was 3.6 V with more than 1,000 cycles … Federal Reserve History, Oil Shock of 1973–74 — the embargo "nearly quadrupled the price of oil from $2.90 a barrel before the embargo to $11.65 a barrel in January 1974". U.S. Department of Energy, The History of the Electric Car — by 1900 electric cars accounted for "around a third of all vehicles on the road" in the U.S.; electric vehicles "all but disappeared by 1935". BloombergNEF, Lithium-Ion Battery Pack Prices Hit Record Low of $139/kWh — the volume-weighted average pack price fell 14% in 2023 to a record low of $139/kWh. U.S. Department of Energy, Vehicle Technologies Office, FOTW #1354: Electric Vehicle Battery Pack Costs for a … — 139/kWh in 2023 … Wikipedia, Abundance of elements in Earth's crust — lithium abundance in Earth's crust is 20 ppm (0.002%). Wikipedia, Lithium — density 0.5334 g/cm³ at room temperature; atomic number 3 … Wikipedia, Electrolysis of water — the standard potential of the water-electrolysis cell is −1.229 V at 25 °C and pH 0; a minimum of about 1.23 V is required. PMC / MDPI (open access), Experimental Study on Thermal-Induced Runaway in … — SEI decomposition at 77.13 °C; separator melt at 135.86 °C (PE) and 168.59 °C (PP) … Battery University, BU-304a: Safety Concerns with Li-ion — "the failure rate of a quality Li-ion cell is better than 1 in 10 million"; a failing cell's temperature "can quickly reach 500 °C". U.S. Geological Survey, Congo (Kinshasa) — Mineral Information Center — in 2024 the Democratic Republic of the Congo was the world's leading cobalt producer, "accounting for an estimated 75% of global output". #LithiumIon #BatteryTechnology #Lithium #Electrochemistry #MaterialsScience #EnergyStorage #HistoryOfScience #Engineering