Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Silicon has around ten times the specific capacity of graphite but its application as an anode in post-lithium-ion batteries presents huge challenges. After decades of development, silicon-based batteries are now on the verge of large-scale commercial success.
Almost 30 years since the inception of lithium-ion batteries, lithium–nickel–manganese–cobalt oxides are becoming the favoured cathode type in automobile batteries. Their success lies primarily with their superior energy density relative to lithium–cobalt oxide, lithium–manganese oxide and lithium–iron phosphate electrodes.
Polyanion oxide cathodes offer better thermal stability and safety than transition-metal oxide cathodes, and their cell voltages are also higher than those of the oxide analogues with the same redox couple. Lithium iron phosphate is the first commercialized polyanion cathode for lithium-ion batteries.
The electrolyte is an indispensable component in any electrochemical device. In Li-ion batteries, the electrolyte development experienced a tortuous pathway closely associated with the evolution of electrode chemistries.
Li4Ti5O12 spinel was initially investigated as a cathode material for a rechargeable lithium battery. It was later successfully exploited as an anode by the lithium-ion battery industry to provide safe, high power but low energy density cells relative to those with graphite/carbon anodes.
LiMn2O4 spinel has a robust structure with a three-dimensional network of channels for fast Li+ conduction. Despite its relatively low electrochemical capacity, LiMn2O4 has found success as a cost-effective and high-power cathode for the Li-ion battery industry.
The carbonaceous anode was the final important piece of the jigsaw for the first commercialized rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. Its original inventor recounts how the search for a research subject led to the breakthrough.
Lithium cobalt oxide was the first commercially successful cathode for the lithium-ion battery mass market. Its success directly led to the development of various layered-oxide compositions that dominate today’s automobile batteries.
It is now almost 50 years since the first rechargeable lithium batteries, based on the reversible intercalation of lithium into layered structured titanium disulfide, were conceived. They were the precursor to the structurally related layered oxides that now dominate energy storage for electronics, the grid and vehicles.
