UT prof ’s batteries research honored

University of Texas at Austin engineering professor John Goodenough will receive $500,000 from the Welch Foundation in recognition of his research in batteries, including the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power mobile phones worldwide.

Last spring, Goodenough and colleague Maria Helena Braga outlined new potential for a low-cost battery that wouldn’t need to be charged as often, potentially helping electric vehicles operate for longer distances.

That battery uses glass electrolytes, not liquid electrolytes, and can operate at low temperatures and recharge quickly, according to a UT-Austin news release.

The Houston-based Welch Foundation has funded chemical research since 1954. Goodenough, 95 years old, will receive the award in Houston in October.

“If I’m able still to walk, I’ll plan to be there,” he said by phone Tuesday.

Goodenough said Tuesday that he plans to use the $500,000 for equipment for experiments and to fund research positions.

Braga, a senior research fellow at UT-Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering, started developing the glass electrolytes at the University of Porto in Portugal, Goodenough said. She began working with UT Austin about two years ago, according to a UT-Austin news release.

Collaboration across disciplines, Goodenough said, has been important to the success of the research.

“I’ve had the good fortune to be working at a time where we could bring chemistry and physics and engineering in collaboration with one another,” he said. “It’s been a confluence of those disciplines to come into the field of materials science.”

It’s just the latest honor for Goodenough, who joined UT-Austin’s faculty in 1986. He earned the National Medal of Science in 2011, and in 2014, he won the Draper Prize for Engineering from the National Academy of Engineering.

The Royal Society of Chemistry distributes a biennial John B. Goodenough Award, recognizing sustained contributions to the field of material chemistry.

Goodenough discovered that it would be possible to store energy in rechargeable batteries through lithium cobalt oxide in 1979, at the University of Oxford’s inorganic chemistry laboratory.

That discovery helped develop the lithium-ion batteries present in smartphones, electric cars and other devices.