Interview with Michael Stanley WhittinghamSUNY Binghamton, 30 October 2000Stanley Whittingham: I graduated with a PhD in solid-state chemistry (from Oxford). Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent: So you were trained as a chemist, mainly? SW: Yes. BBV: And why did you go to Stanford, with Prof. Huggins? SW: Because in my time almost everyone from Oxford came to the States for one or two years. That was expected if you wanted an academic or an industrial job. It changed a lot... 1968. And why Stanford? It was on the West Coast, California had sun. BBV: And your PhD was on tungsten bronzes? SW:
That's right: tungsten oxides and tungsten bronzes. BBV: And how did you choose this topic? It was not that popular? SW: No, I think Oxford always had a very active program in solid state. There were three or four faculty there interested in solid-state. BBV: Who was that? SW: Peter Dickins was my advisor; and J. S. Anderson was head of the department. And Jack Lunette was also there, and he was interested in the theory of calxes. So initially we were studying (?) catalytic activity, and how all that changed with the changes in the electronic properties of the material. There was a great deal of interest in the crystal structure, or rather the band structure, that controls the catalytical activity. BBV: So it was mainly for catalysis in Britain? SW: Right. And we chose a very, very simple reactant: mainly oxygen atoms, and we just looked at how they recombine at the surface. And this was at the time of Sputnik and the US Air Force paid for the research. BBV: Even the research conducted in Oxford? SW: They paid through their London office. Because they were interested in how various species (?) reacted outside their space ships. BBV: So it makes sense in fact. SW: Right. And that was the topic of my masters degree mainly. And then we looked at the same materials as catalysts potentially for gas production. And the Gas Council paid for that research. But within a few months of me starting the research, they struck natural gas in the North Sea. BBV: And you stopped the project? SW: No, they said: we are not really interested in what you are doing anymore, but you have got the money. Do what you want and don't bother us too much. BBV: And in those days money was easy to get? SW: Oh yes, you turned down money in those days. Arne Hessenbruch: You mean this was the case between the oil crisis and the discovery of natural gas in the North Sea? SW: No, they discovered gas in the North Sea before the 1973 oil crisis. AH: Why did the money flow easily? SW: Well, the money came from the Gas Council and they made gas basically from coal. So they wanted a better catalyst to convert. Natural gas avoids all that messy stuff. The rest is really history. London cleaned itself up because they stopped burning coal. BBV: And then, when you moved to Stanford who was there? And how was the lab? SW: I worked for Bob Huggins there. And that was quite a switch. In England, France, and Germany, solid-state chemistry was a respectable subject. Chemistry departments did solid-state chemistry. In the US you could count the number of solid-state chemists on the fingers of one hand. So I went to a materials science department, not to a chemistry department. BBV: Was Huggins considered a solid-state chemist? SW: He was a materials scientist with a PhD
form MIT and he set up a new centre for materials research at Stanford.
His interest was in solid-state electric chemistry; how ions move in
solids and things like that. And at that time the Ford Motor Company
had just discovered that sodium ions move very fast in a material called
beta-alumina. Sodium ions move almost as fast in that solid as they
do in a liquid. BBV: So it was the time of the beta-alumina? SW: Yes. Ford published their data in 1967,
and I went to Stanford in 1968. BBV: Did you continue your research on tungsten
bronzes there? SW: Yes and no. I measured the conductivity
of beta-alumina. That is what we tried to do. We has to have electrodes
that were reversible to electrons, so we could get a current, and to
the ions that were moving. So we paid attention to bronzes that had
sodium in them, to metallic conductors, to see if they would make good
electrodes. So we have narrowed the Oxford work into the Stanford work. BBV: And how did you develop the batteries
using tungsten bronzes. SW: I arrived at Stanford in February. In May
or June of that year Bob Huggins left to go to Washington to run this
whole suite of advanced research centres of materials (?) of which MIT
is the last surviving. So he went there and manned those for about two
and a bit years. I remained at Stanford and continued my research on
the basics. And about the same time, there were others in the medical
field who were interested in batteries for pace makers and things like
that and there was a number of good silver iodide conductors... (?).
And it struck us that sodium or potassium had an advantage over silver
because they yield a bigger current. And that is where we got the interest
in actually using them. Beta-alumina as the electrolyte and we thought
of sodium and some oxides as the electrodes. BBV: And how did you come to your favourite,
titanium disulfide? SW: Ah, that is a jump. BBV: Yes, because you took the patent out in
1973. SW: Right. While I was at Stanford a number
of other people, in particular Hector Ball, who was Professor of Applied
Physics and associated with the Materials Department. He was contacted
to find people to go to Exxon who were starting up a new corporate research
lab. Exxon really had very few chemists and physicists at the time.
So I did an interview at Exxon and one at Cornell, and I was offered
a job in the Materials Science Department at Cornell, not the Chemistry
Department. About a third or a half of the faculty in Materials Science
Departments in the US are physicists and chemiusts... they have PhDs
in physics or chemistry, not in materials science. BBV: Incidentally, do you think that physicists
have had an impact on your field? SW: Oh yes. At
Exxon they made me a very nice offer. What they had built up was an
interdisciplinary group. It was led by Fred Gamble, who had also come
from Stanford. His interest was in superconductivity. And that was the
first wave of superconductivity. What we tried to do then was to look
at (?) tantalum disulfides. And by intercalating different molecules
between the sheets of tantalum disulfide we could change the superconductivity
transition temperature. So, tantalum sulfide became superconducting,
I think it was at 0.8 degrees Kelvin. By putting in different molecules
you could raise it to about 6 Kelvin. It turns out that the one that
could raise it the highest was potassium hydroxide. And my first job
was to try to understand what was going on. And what I found out was
that basically potassium ion structure was particularly stable in TaS2-...
It behaved like a salt ... there
was again of energy .. (?). AH: Where was this new Exxon lab placed? SW: It was across the street from a refinery
in Linden, New Jersey, along with a raft of other chemical and solids
research labs. Basic research. And the goal was to be prepared since
oil was soon going to run out. My part was energy-related systems, other
than petroleum and chemicals. AH: It was set up in 1972 and you were there
from the very beginning? SW: It may have been set up in 1971, but basically
yes. BBV: How many people worked with you on this
project? SW: The group headed by Fred Gamble: there
was about six of us. Each one of us had a different background. Fred
Gamble himself was something like a physical chemist, there was an organic
chemist, some were physicists. AH: Presumably you had plenty of funding for
equipment and the like? SW: In those days, if you needed something
for your research you asked for it, and it would be there in a week.
Money was no issue. They invested in a research laboratory like they
invested in drilling oil. You expect one out of five to pay off. BBV: Was it perceived as a long-term project? SW: Yes. BBV: And what did that mean: 10 years? SW: 5-10 years. Industry has changed considerably
since then. I would say after about 7 years they began to ask: well,
what is going to come out of this? By that point we had moved from tantalum
sulfide, which is really no superconductivity material. We were looking
at lighter materials: titanium sulfide.
And we were looking at lithium, not potassium, because it turns out
that potassium is very dangerous. And some time in this period a Japanese
company had come out with a carbon fluoride battery which they used
for fish floats. They fish at night and they need to see where their
floats are. And that was a primary battery. This was the beginning of
interest in lithium batteries. BBV: So the initial interest came from Japan? SW: Well... we thought we could do something
better. It was a high-voltage, one-shot, then you throw it away. And
Exxon was only interested in rechargeable systems. They were looking
to the electrical vehicle. BBV: From the very beginning? SW: As soon as we started. We were only in
energy, but we told them that we may have a battery and they immediately
jumped to the notion of an electrical vehicle. And they in fact built
well it must have been in the mid-1970s a 3W and diesel
hybrid vehicle running on the roads. AH: Presumably the Japanese were also interested
in the EV at this early stage? SW: No, they were not interested at all. In
the mid-1970s some Japanese companies started selling calculators with
solar systems built in. AH: In other words, they focused only on smaller
batteries than those employed for vehicles? SW: Yes. And it is important to make the point
that no battery company came up with any inventions. Every invention
coming from Japan came not from a battery company. They had a device
they wanted to take to the market. Sony, Sanyo. It is a straight busines.
They do not stray from where they have been. BBV: And from where did you get your techniques
in intercalation chemistry? Did you receive training in this already
in Oxford? SW: Well, the tungsten bronzes are quite similar
in this respect sodium, lithium, or hydrogen in and out. There was interest
in electrochromic displays in the late 1960s early 1970s and so we were
all familiar with them. You have tungsten dioxide and you put in in
acid adding a bit of zinc. It generates atomic hydrogen and turns into
a solid going from yellow to blue. BBV: Yes, but when the mixed conductors started,
I think there was something of a change in intercalation chemistry.
SW: Yes. BBV: Was there any feedback from your research
at Exxon to intercalation chemistry? Or was it isolated as a completely
industrial research lab? SW: No, I think we had a huge impact. At the
time Bell Labs were doing similar things. They were located close to
us, they were a similar group, also with many individuals from Stanford.
We were competing head-on for a while, also in publications. If you
look at our publications on the battery, you will see a lot of basic
science with no mention of batteries at all. Exxon clearly did not want
to disturb their aura (?). AH: What journals did you publish in? SW: Electrochemical Society, Materials Research
Bulletin. But the electrochemical stuff came after the basic stuff.
So much of the basic stuff went into the MRB which had a very strong
reputation in those days. BBV: So, you have been working on titanium
sulfide for many years? SW: I started working on that when I joined
Exxon in 1972, already in October. As soon as we started work on it
we realized that it had very interesting physical properties. So my
colleagues like Art Thompson ... (?). After a year we knew about that
material than anybody in the world. AH: May I ask a couple of questions about the
early period before we get advance too far chronologically? Would you
please contrast the appearance of the labs at Oxford, Stanford and Exxon? SW: Sure. Oxford was an organic chemistry lab.
We were in the old wing of the building, built probaly at the beginning
of the last century. The walls are three feet thick. There was mercury
all over the floor and under the floorboards. It was an antique place.
But most of the facilities were there. It was all set up for solid-state
work, because the head of the department was a solid-state chemist.
We had some of the first NMR ... (?). It was, I would not say state
of the art but, pretty good for those days. And what people don't
realize is that there was no such thing as an electronic calculator.
The computer we used took up a whole Victorian house and it had less
power than one of those [pointing to a PC]. AH: What was your working day like? SW: If you were running an experiment you stayed
there. There was no computer. If you were lucky you had a chart recorder.
change temperatures... (?) You built your own equipment, you could not
buy it. BBV: Was the equipment different in Stanford?
Was it a shock? SW: Stanford was a new building. The Center
for Materials Science had been built just a few years earlier. The building
was new, most of the equipment was fairly new, though soime of it was
surplus from (?). But the change was more going from a chemistry department
to one of materials science. There were no fume hoods in the buildings.
It was much more electronically oriented and obviuously the computers
at Stanford were then better than those at Oxford. And after maybe a
year there, a hand-held calculator costing about $95 came out. .....
(?) BBV: And that was important for your own field? SW: Yes, because we wanted to measure how fast
ions move. We made the first measurements over the first 5 or 10 seconds.
You can do it with a chart recorder but it is very difficult. BBV: And at Exxon? Did you have everything
you needed? SW: You had everything you wanted within reason.
It was a new set-up and wanted to get it going right. Their attitude
was that our time was much more expensive than the equipment. AH: Were there more technicians at Exxon than
the other two places? SW: No, I would say it was almost the opposite.
Oxford had more support staff than any place in the US. We had a huge
machine shop, a huge glass-blowing shop. And you had the old business
of artisans in what were called shops. They would do new things for
you, but they expected you to do anything routine by yourself. If it
was complicated, they would do it for you. AH: And in the US you would buy in? SW: Yes, there you tended to buy stuff. There
was some support staff but nowhere near the same. These days there is
almost no support staff. AH: But the impact of the computer has generally
speaking been more marked in later periods than the one we are talking
about now, right? SW: Yes, when did the PC arrive? AH: I think it was about 1986. SW: And I was at Exxon from 1972 to 1984. We
came up with a battery patent early on. We had an incredibly good patent
attorney. They would write up your invention and then ask you: why can't
you do it this or that way? And they came up with ideas for building
a battery fully charged or fully discharged. TiS2
patent... (?) BBV: And did you publish more patents or more
articles during your time at Exxon? SW: More articles because one of the goals
was to get Exxon better known as a research institution so they could
hire better scientists. And there was some pride with the president
of the company that he wanted to compete against Bell Labs. So he wanted
us to be perceived as the labs of the energy business. One of
the presidents was E.B. David (?) who subsequently became head of the
board of Science Advisors or something like that. He wanted Exxon to
be known as the best place in the world. BBV: So they valued research over patents? SW: Both. BBV: Was not there a tension between the two
in the disclosure of results? SW:Yes. The publications did not mention batteries
at all. So we made materials and we described how we made them. We then
discussed their scientific behaviour, how they reacted with water, their
thermodynamics. But anyone smart enough would know what we were doing.
They soon caught on. And I think about 1975 or 1976 when the first patent
started coming out we released the first paper in Science Magazine.
And about the same time we also published ... (?). Because up to that
time people in the battery business did not know what intercalation
was. ... BBV: Did you attend the Belgirate, Italy, meeting
in 1973 that purportedly is the founding event of the community? SW: Yes, I gave two papers both of which went
very well. And the other thing I remember is that Carl Wagner attended
that meeting. He was very old. He basically put the field of corrosion
on a scientific basis. He ought to have received a Nobel Prize. BBV: Were there more Europeans there? SW: It was organized by Europeans, and I think
there were more Europeans. And I remember that I was there with my wife
and two young children. We bailed out half a day early because they
said it was going to snow in the Alps, in order to go back to England. AH: Were there any Japanese present? SW: Yes, I think there were a few. AH: So you agree with the interpretation that
this was a founding meeting? SW: Yes. AH: One might also point to the beginning of
the journal Solid State Ionics (1980) as the origin of a community? SW: Yes, but by that stage we were already
having annual meetings. BBV: Did the journal make any difference? SW: Do you want a bit of history of the journal?
The North Holland folks then had an office in the US. I lived in New
Jersey two miles away from the publishing editor. They published the
Belgirate proceedings. And this editor said: we need a journal in this
field. I was one of those who said: no we don't. AH: Why did you think that? SW: I thought there were too many journals
already, even at that time. There were few compared with today of course,
but even so. So he said, you prove that to us and we will pay you to
do it. So Hans Becker (?) and I sent out a mail to everyone in the community,
saying North Holland was going to start this journal and was there any
interest? I fully expected to get negative feedback hbut 95% wanted
it. So North Holland played avery nice game and we could not say no. AH: Did the journal then not change anything
much? SW: Yes, the journal changed a great deal because
it pulled all the papers together in one place. Remember in those days
there were no journals such as Chemistry and Materials. Solid-state
chemistry had just started and that was more high-temperature. And
there was the Materials Research Bulletin. So papers were all
over the place. So they convinced us to go with it. I had my arm twisted
to edit it. Within one year we went from single-column to double-column
format and larger-size paper. It basically took off straightaway. BBV: The whole community decided to publish
in this journal instead of in the others you mentioned? SW: Yes. They kept publishing in other journals
also, but they knew that here they woulod have their stuff recognized
. BBV: Was it a fast publicatiuon? SW: Five months. The goal was to get it out
quickly. In those days the Materials Research Bulletin got things out
in two months. BBV: Let us come back to your career. Why did
you leave Exxon in 1984? SW: Exxon had one good thing about them. It
was run by scientists and engineers, not by lawyers or MBAs. I will
give you an example. When we had come up with the battery, the board
of directors came to the lab to listen to us. And they then said here
is the money, now go and do it. So they built an applied film group
costing millions of dollars, a very good one. It was like a poker game:
well we make a big dollar or we loose it. Their philosophy was that
if you were a good scientist then you would also be a good director.
So within a few years I became a lab director. I am not sure exactly
when but at some stage they said: now you have shown that yoiu can manage
something you know, so we will now send you off to manage something
you do not understand. That is why I went to an engineering facility,
where I headed their chemical engineering. I was responsible for technology,
for sunthetic fuels in those days, chemical plants, refineries. It sounded
challenging at the time and I stayed there four years. At that time
began the shale oil and coal gasification (?). It was a booming period.
My job was to employ as many chemical engineers as I could lay my hands
on. B ut soon the writing was on the wall and the slump was coming.
We started laying off people. We went from roary-rosy days to (?). And
I was doing no science myself then. I missed that and that is why I
went to Schlumberger. My first boss at Exxon went to the Metallurgical
division there. BBV: What kind of research did you do there? AH: It was 1984-1988. SW: Right. Schlumberger was in Richfield, CT, the lab was built and designed by a famous architect called Johnson, from Texas. One or two stories, glass, a very pretty building. You could not have your names on the doors or pictures on the walls unless they'd approve them. Schlumberger was then the Rolls-Royce of the oil field. They built very expensive analytical equipment which they put down oil wells to determine whether there was in fact any oil down there, what the rock foundations were like. They would put these probes worth millions of dollars down the well, pull them up very slowly and you would get wiggles and charts and things like that. And if they could reproduce the wiggles they would sell it. It was a very low-key company. In those days they probably made more money than all but two or three of the biggest oil companies. What they did not have was chemists, those who tried to understand what these measurements actually meant. They did have a large number of physicists and electrical engineers building the instruments. Then they decided to build up a basic rock science group, the job of which was to try to understand what was measured. And I went as head of the group, to bild up the chemistry activity with the engineers. One of the biggest electrolytes in the world is clay. It is clay in the formations that causes various forces to be formed in the earth and you can measure them. AH: So you were not really moving to something completely new. This is the link to your previous field. SW: Yes, but I had been doing management. At Schlumberger I was dealing with chemical engineers. But as my wife said, I was doing far too much travel. Schlumberger had labs in Texas, Connecticutt, Tokyo, Paris, and Cambridge, England. During my first year I was in the US maybe half of the time. BBV: Is that why you stayed only four years there? SW: When I went there it was a booming organization run by a Frenchman (Ludeau?). A whole book has been written about him. He died, and his chosen successor failed. There was a palace revolution. And a Scotsman was in charge, Ewan Baird (?), I think he is still in charge. At that point they were building a new chemistry facility in Richfield. They had put the foundations in, and he came in one day and said, no. Construction stopped. He ordered people back to basics. Schlumberger also had some TV stations back in France. They invested in other things. It was as if they only wanted to have Nobel Prize scientists: only the best was good enough. They did hire some outstandingly strong theoretical physicists. We looked at how oil flows through sandstone in rocks. Sprinkering (?) techniques ..very similar to how snowflakes build up on the window. Some people there did not like it: why are you doing this? There was a reaction against basic science and people wanted to get back to building and improving equipment. AH: Was the basic stuff modelling? SW: Yes, there was a strong modelling component and a measurement component. At that time we had about 30 people in this basic science group. We were told basically that we could become engineers or leave. We were given about 18 months. They were very generous. Some of the best people were in their 20s. Three of them were offered tenured professorships within a month. AH: This is also the period of change from the mainframe to the PC. SW: Yes, and Schlumberger was big on that. They had a Cray computer and Macintoshes. The theorists wrote their programs on the Macs and ran them on the Cray. Schlumberger also had e-mail, around the world. We were in touch with the Japanese and the French. That was really the first time that I used e-mail. They were well ahead. AH: This must have been towards the end of your time there? SW: They had it from the beginning. Remember, they were well versed in how to get electronic information. BBV: Did you go straight from Schlumberger to SUNY Binghamton? SW: Yes. At that time I decided that US industrial research activites had started on a down hill. Exxon had cut back on their basic research by about 50%. Seven years earlier they had doubled basically overnight. Then they had said: what would you do if we gave you twice as much money? Give us a plan by Monday (that was on Friday). In my recollection we worked all that weekend. Within a week we had the doubled size. AH: How would you account for the change in atmosphere, for the downturn in the mid-1980s? SW: A number of things: 1) oil prices had been going up but then they dropped; 2) MBAs started getting into the business (short-termism; now the stock price is more important than everything else) and then they looked hard at basic research. With regard to Exxon: it is a mammooth company. The corporate labs were under $50 million. When they doubled it, it got above $50 million. They rounded everything off into hundreds of millions. Anything under $50 million just did not appear in the balance sheet. 3) When the oil price went down there was no longer a sense of crisis. So you do not need any longer to investigate all the alternative forms of energy. Exxon had gone into solar, batteries, computers, a chip company. But Exxon did not really have the management expertise. At about that time Exxon sold all their battery technologies. They licensed them to a Japanese company, one American and one European. I think it was Sony in Japan. Exxon said: you mean you can not make $100 million a year on this? AH: It would seem that the price of oil is a really good indicator of the field of solid-state ionics? SW: Yes. When Exxon got out, the whole field got out. The federal government cut funding, thinking that if Exxon was not interested, then why should we be. BBV: So how did the field continue? Where did the incentive come from? SW: Europe was continuing. The Japanese had our technology. There were a few problems with it. They wanted a safe anode; they could not use pure lithium. ... (?) John Goodenough came up with cobalt oxide. That is almost double the voltage. Sony combined that with an interpolation compound of graphite as the anode; and came out with what is called (?). The Japanese now have some 90% of the market for all lithium rechargeables. Sony has the primary licence making sublicenses. I think the patent is running out any day now. A number of companies toyed with getting into the business. Eveready two years ago started a plant and found that they could buy the batteries cheaper in Japan than they could build them themselves. The Japanese just have such a long lead time. AH: Your personal choice of going back to academia. There was no future in industry you said... SW: There was no future in industry and I wanted to do my own thing. In the mid-1970s 9 out of 10 solid state chemists were in industry. About that time chemistry departments in this country suddenly realized that this is a field. We want these people. Now, 9 out of 10 are back in academia. AH: What impact did the return of solid state chemists to academia have upon the field? SW: In 1987 superconductivity happened. All solid state chemist jumped on board. The result was this symposium. Meeting in New Orleans. The largest room in New Orleans was not big enough.... [too much noise] BBV: The field suffered from the cold fusion affair? SW: Yes and no.... [too much noise] few people got involved in cold fusion AH: Characterization? SW: Computerization has accelerated the getting of measurement results.
2nd tape: SW: Most
of these batteries have maybe one or two years. They last as long as
the product itself. As far as environmental concerns: they are pretty
darn good. [noise] AH: Hybrid vehicles? SW: They are there. The Japanese have them. All that is needed is the political will to factor in the enviromental advantages. BBV: Oxide markets? SW: Electrochromic displays. AH: Optimism when you started? SW: Optimism fuelled by end of oil. Now the end of oil is not in sight. But batteries are needed in the small electronic devices. The EV is not everything. AH: Whom should we talk to: Frank, John Goodenough, Michel Armand. BBV: Hagenmuller? Steele? SW: Steele is still active. AH: Fuel cell relevance? SW: Fuel cells are much more active in Europe than in the US. AH: For political reasons? SW: No, .. [noise]
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