Energy storage devices are now basic components of a growing number of modern-day devices – and much more besides. Indeed, from waking up to the alarm on a smartphone, to working on a laptop and driving home in the evening in a hybrid or fully electric vehicle, it would be tough to perform many of our daily tasks without the lithium-ion battery.
In 2019, Akira Yoshino, Stanley Whittingham, and John Goodenough were awarded the Nobel prize in Chemistry “for the development of lithium-ion batteries,” in recognition of the central role the products have assumed in our lives.
Technology has turned today’s smartphones into TVs, books, organizers, heart rate monitors, as well as communications devices. Electricity is what powers all of these features, but without batteries, we’d be perpetually stuck next to a power socket.