On November 6, Professor Zhou Haoshen, of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Nanjing University, gave a lecture to the students from the Kuang Yaming Honors School and the top-ranking classes, and his title was “The past, present, and future of lithium secondary battery.”

Professor Zhou simply introduced the history of chemical battery, development of the Nobel-Prize-winning secondary lithium battery, selection of the positive and negative electrode materials, and the hot research directions of battery chemistry from the shallower to the deeper. Professor Zhou is a well-known scientist in the field of energy harvesting, a Chang Jiang Scholar as well as the chief researcher of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) of Japan. The lecture went on in a lively atmosphere as the students attentively followed Zhou and interacted with him.

Zhou started with a brief comparison of the differences between the primary and secondary batteries as well as an introduction to several other batteries such as the lead-sulfate and sodium-ion batteries. Then, he turned to the topic: the lithium-ion battery. He talked about its wide applications including electric bicycles, mobile phones, and electric vehicles. Next, he continued by introducing the research of John B. Goodenough and M. Stanley Whittingham.

One of the greatest difficulties on battery electrode materials is the dendritic crystals. Once the dendritic crystals grow on the electrodes and pierces the diaphragms, they will lead to a short circuit. For instance, a serious fire in Japan caused by such a short circuit almost ended the possibility of lithium as the cathode material, but scientific researchers did not give it up. Instead, they developed the cathode materials such as lithium cobalt oxide, lithium manganese oxide and lithium ferrous phosphate, which compose of oxygen atoms, metal layers, oxygen atom layers, and lithium-ion site between these layers. In addition, Zhou also explained the advantages and disadvantages of these various materials.

For the anode materials, there is polyacetylene anode. At the beginning, this anode material was not very promising because people tended to believe that the lithium-ion battery should use lithium-ion as its anode materials. Akira Yoshino, however, persisted and finally succeeded in developing polyacetylene as the anode material. At present, Yoshino is engaged in the research of battery safety as well as silicon anodes, for which scientists have employed the method of compositing silicon monooxide and graphite to stabilize the expandable silicon.

Additionally, Professor Zhou also used the experience of Goodenough to convince the students that they should not have worry about having no way out in the future and should not follow the shortsightedness in society. He hoped that the students would find a field that they really like and then bend their mind to it. His words inspired the students and touched them.

Finally, the lecture came to an end in applauses and enthusiastic questions from the students.