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During his time in elementary school, one of his teachers suggested that he readThe Chemical History of a Candle byMichael Faraday, and this sparked a multitude of questions for Yoshino regarding chemistry, a subject he had not been interested in prior to reading the book.[6]
During his college years, Yoshino had attended a course taught by Japanese chemistKenichi Fukui, the first recipient of East Asian ancestry to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.[7]
Yoshino spent his entire non-academic career atAsahi Kasei Corporation.[8] Immediately after graduating with his master's degree in 1972, Yoshino began working at Asahi Kasei.[9] He joined the Exploratory Research Team at Asahi Kasei Corporation in the early 1970s to explore new general-purpose materials, initially exploring practical applications for polyacetylene but turned to experimenting with using polyacetylene as an anode material once Japan's electronics industry attempted to create new lightweight and compact rechargeable battery to power their mobile devices.[6]
He began work in the Kawasaki Laboratory in 1982 and was promoted to manager of product development for ion batteries in 1992.[9] In 1994, he became manager of technical development for the LIB manufacturer A&T Battery Corp.,[9] a joint venture company of Asahi Kasei andToshiba. Asahi Kasei made him a fellow in 2003 and, in 2005, general manager of his own laboratory.[9] Since 2017, he has been a professor atMeijo University and his status at Asahi Kasei has changed to honorary fellow.[9]
In 1983 Yoshino fabricated a prototype rechargeable battery usinglithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) (discovered in 1979 by Godshall et al. at Stanford University,[11][12][13] andJohn Goodenough andKoichi Mizushima at Oxford University) ascathode and polyacetylene asanode.[9] This prototype, in which the anode material itself contains nolithium, and lithium ions migrate from the LiCoO2 cathode into the anode during charging, was the direct precursor to the modernlithium-ion battery (LIB).[9]
Polyacetylene had low realdensity which meant high capacity required large battery volume, and also had problems with instability, so Yoshino switched to carbonaceous material as anode and in 1985 fabricated the first prototype of the LIB and received the basic patent.[9][14][15]
This was the birth of the current lithium-ion battery.[9]
The LIB in this configuration was commercialized bySony in 1991 and by A&T Battery in 1992.[16] Yoshino described challenges and history of the invention process in a book chapter from 2014.[17]
Yoshino discovered that carbonaceous material with a certain crystalline structure was suitable as anode material,[14][15] and this is the anode material that was used in the first generation of commercial LIBs. Yoshino developed the aluminum foil current collector[18] which formed a passivation layer to enable high cell voltage at low cost, and developed the functional separator membrane[19] and the use of a positive temperature coefficient (PTC) device[20] for additional safety.[9]
The LIB's coil-wound structure was conceived by Yoshino to provide large electrode surface area and enable high current discharge despite the low conductivity of the organic electrolyte.[9]
In 1986 Yoshino commissioned the manufacture of a batch of LIB prototypes.[9] Based on safety test data from those prototypes, theUnited States Department of Transportation (DOT) issued a letter stating that the batteries were different from the metalliclithium battery.[21]
2001: Ichimura Prizes in Industry—Meritorious Achievement Prize[8]
2003: Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology—Prize for Science and Technology, Development Category[8]
^Fehrenbacher, Katie (26 April 2018)."A conversation with a lithium-ion battery pioneer". GreenBiz. Retrieved10 October 2019.It was over 35 years ago, in 1981, when I started my research on batteries....This research initiative started not fully focused on batteries. It started from the study on polyacetylene
^N. A. Godshall, I. D. Raistrick, and R. A. Huggins, Journal of the Electrochemical Society, Abstract 162, Vol. 126, p. 322C; "Thermodynamic Investigations of Ternary Lithium-Transition Metal-Oxide Systems for Lithium Batteries" (August 1979).
^N. A. Godshall, I. D. Raistrick, and R. A. Huggins, Journal of the Electrochemical Society, Extended Abstract 162, Vol. 79-2, pp. 420–422; "Thermodynamic Investigations of Ternary Lithium-Transition Metal-Oxide Systems for Lithium Batteries" (October 1979).
^Ned A. Godshall, "Electrochemical and Thermodynamic Investigation of Ternary Lithium -Transition Metal-Oxide Cathode Materials for Lithium Batteries: Li2MnO4 spinel, LiCoO2, and LiFeO2", Presentation at 156th Meeting of the Electrochemical Society, Los Angeles, CA, (17 October 1979).
^abUS 4668595, Yoshino; Akira, "Secondary Battery", issued 9 May 1986, assigned to Ashahi Kasei, Priority Data 10 May 1985, by Espacenet Patent search
^ab"JP 2642206". Archived fromthe original on 22 March 2020. Retrieved7 July 2011., by USPTO PATENT FULL-TEXT AND IMAGE DATABASE
^"Article of Tech-On". Archived fromthe original on 22 March 2012., JP 2128922, Yoshino; Akira, "Nonaqueous secondary Battery", Application date 28 May 1984, issued 2 May 1997, assigned to Asahi Kasei
^"JP 2642206"., Yoshino; Akira, "Battery", Application date 28 May 1989, issued 2 May 1997, assigned to Asahi Kasei
^"JP 3035677"., Yoshino; Akira, "Secondary battery equipped with safety element", Application date 13 September 1991, issued 25 February 2000, assigned to Asahi Kasei
^Lithium-ion secondary battery (Japanese) 2nd edition, chapter 2 "History of development of lithium-ion secondary battery", P27-33, Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun (1996)
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