so today's the chemistry Nobel Prize has
been announced and for once it's really
excited Neil because it's for Layton
batteries and so he's gone on a battery
Safari some of you know that Neil is a
motorcyclist he has an electric
motorcycle which in the honor of the
Nobel Prize he brought into the lab how
did you find out that they won the prize
well I had planned to watch it live but
I was actually working this morning and
I forgot about the announcement so
somebody came into my office very
excitedly telling me that finally that
the lithium ion people had got the prize
it's been awarded to the people who
really made lithium-ion batteries what
they are today and gave us the kind of
devices we we all take for granted the
batteries on this motorbike are
lithium-ion batteries but they're not
what they seem if you look inside them
and Neil started in the excitement
taking it to bits to show us what's
inside you'll find there is a whole
stack of many many lithium-ion batteries
and the key point about these batteries
is that they are small they have a lot
of energy in them and they're very light
the reason they're lots of batteries is
because each battery is about four volts
and to drive a motorcycle engine with
enough power you need a much higher
voltage so you will have a whole series
of batteries in series this is much more
efficient than low-voltage where you
need very thick wires to take the big
current the way a battery works is
effectively it shuttles electrons from a
negative electrode to a positive
electrode in the batteries that were
developed by the prizewinners you have
lithium atoms that release electrons and
those electrons travel through a wire
power powering our phone or whatever is
at the same time the lithium ions that
are released travels through an
electrolyte and then we combine with the
electron
at the other side neil decided he would
try and find a little battery which he
could take to bits the first battery he
found had lithium written on it but it
was an old-fashioned battery which not
using modern lithium-ion technology
it said lithium thionyl chloride none of
us actually know how it works
except it's not the right sort as he was
sewing it open he got really quite a
nasty whiff of some gas probably the
time I'll chloride but this didn't stop
Neil taking it to bits and throwing it
into water stanley was looking at
materials that could as we say
intercalate the lithium so when the
lithium travels through the electrolyte
during that the battery operation it
intercalates into the positive electrode
so he was developing materials that
could capture this lithium after it was
released and then re-release it when we
recharged the battery
what happened subsequently was that good
enough found a material that was better
at reversibly catching this lithium and
releasing it the early batteries
contained lithium metal which is very
highly reactive so one of the
developments that then came later on
which is really that kind of third part
of the prize if you like is that we
realized that we could use graphite to
actually Hel's lithium when the battery
is fully charged so rather than use a
piece of lithium which gets oxidized or
releases its electrons we use graphite
in which the the lithium is stored and
that kind of stabilizes the the lithium
atoms so finally in desperation Neil
offered to sacrifice one of the spare
batteries from his mobile phone the
phone only cost Neil five pounds that's
about six dollars and it had five pounds
of free calls on it so it was a pretty
good bargain and when he started opening
the battery he cut it in half and using
a knife
he short-circuited the two electrodes
and you can see the sparks which show
the amount of energy that must be in
there he then started unwrapping it and
I think this particular batteries quite
complicated it will have obviously the
material for both the cathode that's the
positive electrode and the anode the
negative one but none of us could work
out exactly what it was Neel had wrecked
it pulling it apart but some of them
feast which suggested possibly that
there was some lithium there but it
might just have been electrolysis of the
water we've been following the Nobel
Prize for many years now how do you feel
about this one this seems like a good
chemistry one this time doesn't it I
think it's really good first of all it's
chemistry secondly it really fulfills
nobels
original will that the prize should be
for something that is really useful to
humanity energy-efficient batteries
batteries the delight and store a lot of
energy are really important for
decarbonizing our life allowing us to
use energy but without discharging so
much co2 into the atmosphere I guess one
of the things that this prize might do
is in the wider community or in the
public is perhaps get people excited
about batteries and then we can tell
people about the new type of batteries
chemistry's that are coming along one of
the things that were working on at the
minute is trying to move towards what we
call beyond lithium-ion so this is the
next generation of batteries these are
the ones that will store much more
energy than a lithium ion battery could
be potentially yeah yeah I might still
be in one a chance
[Laughter]
and then he plunged the burning lithium
into the beaker I've got this and this
is a real Nobel Prize medal