Energy · 1976

Intercalation cathodes

Lithium ions slot in and out of a layered crystal, making rechargeable lithium possible.

Stanley Whittingham at Exxon built a rechargeable lithium-titanium disulfide cell in 1976. John Goodenough's 1980 lithium cobalt oxide cathode doubled the voltage to about 4 V; Whittingham, Goodenough and Akira Yoshino shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Quantum mechanics 1925
Voltaic battery 1800

What it led to 2

Lithium-ion battery 1991
Lithium iron phosphate battery 1996

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Lithium-ion battery cell price Latest: 78 $/kWh (2024 USD) (2024) Source: Our World in Data

Electric share of new car sales Latest: Battery electric: 16.5 % of new cars (2025) Source: Our World in Data

Cost of memory and storage Latest: Memory: 1.09k $/TB (2023) Source: Our World in Data