In recent years, Goodenough and his university team had also been exploring new directions for energy storage, including a “glass” battery with solid-state electrolyte and lithium or sodium metal electrodes.
Goodenough also was an early developer of lithium iron phosphate cathodes as an alternative to nickel- and cobalt-based cathodes. LFP is rapidly overtaking more-expensive nickel cobalt manganese in electric vehicle batteries, experts say, because it uses materials that are more abundant and sustainable at much lower cost.
He was born on July 25, 1922, in Jena, Germany, to American parents.
After completing a bachelors in mathematics at Yale University, Goodenough received an masters and a PhD in physics from the University of Chicago. He became a researcher and team leader at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later headed the inorganic chemistry lab at the University of Oxford.
