The Age of Silicon Is Here…for Batteries

Since lithium-ion batteries’ commercial debut three decades ago, this portable and high-density (and Nobel Prize–winning) energy storage technology has revolutionized the fields of consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and large-scale energy storage. And yet even for the technology’s vast advancements—a staggering thirtyfold drop in price between 1991 and 2018, for instance—the biggest improvements have taken place mostly on the lithium-metal-oxide cathode side. Lithium-ion batteries’ graphite anodes, by contrast, have largely stayed the same.