M. Stanley Whittingham, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019

Michael Stanley Whittingham (22 December 1941) is a British-American chemist. He is currently a professor of chemistry and director of both the Institute for Materials Research and the Materials Science and Engineering program at Binghamton University. He also serves as director of the Northeastern Center for Chemical Energy Storage (NECCES), a U.S. Department of Energy Energy Frontier Research (EFRC) Center at Binghamton. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019 alongside Akira Yoshino and John B. Goodenough.

Whittingham is a key figure in the history of the development of lithium-ion batteries, which now are used in everything from mobile phones to electric vehicles. He discovered the intercalation electrodes in 1970s for the first time and thoroughly described the concept of intercalation reaction for rechargeable batteries in the late of 1970s. He holds the original patents on the concept of the use of intercalation chemistry in high-power density, highly reversible lithium batteries. And he invented the first rechargeable lithium ion battery, patented in 1977 and assigned to Exxon. His work on lithium battery laid the foundations for other followers' later developments. Therefore, he is the called Founding Father of rechargeable lithium batteries.

Education and career

Whittingham was born in Nottingham, England, on 22 December 1941. He was educated at Stamford School in Lincolnshire from 1951–1960, before going to New College, Oxford to read Chemistry. At the University of Oxford, he took his BA (1964), MA (1967), and DPhil (1968). After completing his graduate studies, Whittingham was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. He then worked for Exxon Research & Engineering Company for 16 years. He then spent four years working for Schlumberger prior to becoming a professor at Binghamton University.

From 1994 to 2000, he served as the University's vice provost for research. He also served as Vice-Chair of the Research Foundation of the State University of New York for six years. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering at Binghamton University. Whittingham was named Chief Scientific Officer of NAATBatt International in 2017.

Whittingham co-chaired the DOE study of Chemical Energy Storage in 2007,[8] and is now Director of the Northeastern Center for Chemical Energy Storage (NECCES), a U.S. Department of Energy Energy Frontier Research (EFRC) Center at Binghamton University. In 2014, NECCES was awarded a $12.8 million, four-year grant from the Department of Energy to help accelerate scientific breakthroughs needed to build a new 21st-century economy. In 2018, NECCES was given another $3 million by the Department of Energy to continue its important research for two more years. The NECCES team is using the funding to make energy-storage materials work better and to develop new materials that are "cheaper, environmentally friendly, and able to store more energy than current materials can".

Research

high energy density and the diffusion of lithium ions into the titanium disulphide cathode was reversible, making the battery rechargeable. In addition, titanium disulphide has a particularly fast rate of lithium ion diffusion into the crystal lattice. Exxon threw its resources behind the commercialization of a Li/LiClO4/ TiS2 battery. Safety concerns left Exxon to end the project. Whittingham and his team continued to publish their work in academic journals of electrochemistry and solid-state physics. He eventually left Exxon in 1984 and spent four years at Schlumberger as a Manager. In 1988, he accepted the position of Professor at the Chemistry Department, Binghamton University, U.S. to pursue his academic interests.

"All these batteries are called intercalation batteries. It’s like putting jam in a sandwich. In the chemical terms, it means you have a crystal structure, and we can put lithium ions in, take them out, and the structure’s exactly the same afterwards," Whittingham said "We retain the crystal structure. That’s what makes these lithium batteries so good, allows them to cycle for so long." Today's lithium batteries are limited in capacity, because less than one lithium ion/electron is reversibly intercalated per transition metal redox center. To achieve higher energy densities, one approach is go beyond the one electron redox intercalation reactions of the above systems. Currently, Whittingham's research has advanced to multi-electron intercalation reactions, which can increase the storage capacity by intercalating multiple lithium ions. A few multi-electron intercalation materials have been successfully developed by Whittingham, like LiVOPO4/VOPO4 etc. The multivalent vanadium cation (V3+<->V5+) plays an important role to accomplish the multi-electron reactions. These promising materials shine lights on battery industry to increase energy density rapidly.

In 2019, Whittingham, along with John B. Goodenough and Akira Yoshino, was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the development of lithium-ion batteries."

Personal life

Stanley is married to Dr. Georgina Whittingham, a Professor of Spanish at the State University of New York, Oswego. He has 2 children, Michael Whittingham and Jenniffer Whittingham-Bras.