Battery chemistry

M. Stanley Whittingham: inventions and patents

M. Stanley Whittingham is a chemist who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the development of lithium-ion batteries". His US patent for a chalcogenide battery, assigned to Exxon Research and Engineering, describes a battery whose cathode contains a chalcogenide compound and whose anode contains an active metal. At the time of the Nobel award the Nobel Foundation listed his affiliation as Binghamton University, State University of New York.^1,2

Patents

Inventions

• Chalcogenide battery. A battery in which the anode contains an active metal, with lithium preferred, and the cathode contains a chalcogenide compound. The abstract gives lithium anode and titanium disulfide cathode as a highly useful example, as described in US 4,009,052.²

Recognition

• 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, shared one third, "for the development of lithium-ion batteries"¹

Sources

1. Nobel Prize Outreach, M. Stanley Whittingham, Facts, 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (accessed 2026-10-28)
2. Google Patents, US4009052A Chalcogenide battery (accessed 2026-10-28)