There was sad news for the energy storage community in June 2023 with the passing of John Goodenough – the scientist who shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2019 for his work developing the lithium-ion battery. John was 100 years old when he died, and had carried on working right into the final years of his life. He was a giant in the field.
Amongst the numerous articles commemorating his life and career in both the scientific and mainstream media, we thought it would be appropriate to look back at some of the many patents where he is credited as an inventor – John Goodenough is an unusual enough name for us to track down his patent families via public patent registers[1].
What appears to be the first patent family to credit Goodenough as an inventor was filed in 1976 and includes US Patent No. 4,049,891. It protected crystalline compounds which promote fast alkali metal-ion transport, including those with the formula Na1+xZr2SixP3‑xO12 where 0 < x < 3. These materials would come to be termed “NASICONs” – an acronym for sodium (Na) Super Ionic CONductor. NASICONs are still being studied today for their promise as electrolyte materials for solid-state batteries, showing straight away how Goodenough’s inventions are still having impact. A solid start to Goodenough’s patenting career, and there was plenty more to come.
The second patent family from Goodenough reflected truly ground-breaking and valuable work – and indeed the work which was later to gain Goodenough the Nobel Prize. This family included European Patent No. 0 0174 00, which was filed in 1980. The invention was the use of lithium cobalt oxide as a cathode material for lithium-ion batteries – a class of cathode material still used to this day in the batteries of many everyday products. This invention was made during Goodenough’s time in Oxford and is commemorated by a plaque on the wall outside the University’s Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory. One could perhaps say that Goodenough’s cathode material only half-invented the modern lithium-ion battery, as it took the later invention of the graphitic carbon anode material before lithium-ion batteries were commercialised some ten years later. That later invention was from Akira Yoshino, who shared the Nobel Prize with Goodenough[2]. Clearly, though, the twenty-year patent term made the Goodenough patent family rather valuable in providing licensing revenue from this later commercialisation. One of the co-inventors on Goodenough’s patent, Philip Wiseman, commented in a 2017 article “…royalties started to roll in. I’m not sure how many tens of millions they made but I did notice one year, the headline in the Business section of the Daily Telegraph was ‘Battery Powered’ ”.
Goodenough’s lithium-ion battery cathode patents did not always have it their own way, however. A European patent granted from a family filed in 1997 was revoked following an opposition (European Patent No. 0 904 607). This patent protected lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4), a material which is now termed “LFP” and is a common commercial cathode material, which was no doubt the reason for the patent being opposed. It appears that the crux of the matter was debate over whether an article catalogued in a library shortly before the priority date was available to the public and thus novelty-destroying[3]. Going into the full depth of the reasons why the patent was revoked is beyond the scope of this article, as is considering whether equivalent patents in other jurisdictions suffered the same fate. However, we did note that equivalent patents were enforced in the US (including US Patent Nos. 5,910,382 and 6,514,640), resulting in a settlement and licensing agreement on undisclosed terms – it seems that Goodenough’s LFP patents proved to have sharper teeth across the pond.
Goodenough’s inventions were not just confined to lithium-ion batteries. US Patent No. 6,004,688 was filed in 1997 and protected an oxide-ion conducting ceramic for use in solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFCs – a form of high-temperature electrochemical cell). The material protected was a perovskite containing lanthanum, strontium, gallium, and magnesium[4], a class of material now known in the field as LSGM and one of the ubiquitous SOFC electrolytes[5]. A later patent (US 9,093,692 filed in 2013) protected further perovskite electrolytes based on lanthanum, germanium, and magnesium[6]. Goodenough’s patents demonstrate his versatility.
Goodenough carried on working and filing patents well into his 90s. Some recent filings (e.g. in 2016, 2018, and 2019) relate to his invention of the solid-state “glass battery”, which was announced with some bold headlines in 2017. Work to commercialise this invention appears to be on-going. Clearly, commercialisation takes time and is full of uncertainty, but could it be that one day in the not-too-distant-future we will be using a new battery technology underpinned by a Goodenough invention, much like how his key contribution in 1980 led to the commercialisation of the lithium-ion battery? That would be a fitting tribute indeed.
