Akira Yoshino

is a Japanese chemist. He is a fellow of Asahi Kasei Corporation and a professor at Meijo University in Nagoya. He created the first safe, production-viable lithium-ion battery,

Early life and education Yoshino was born in Suita, Japan, on 30 January 1948. He graduated from Kitano High School in Osaka City (1966). He earned a B.S. in 1970 and an M.S. degree in 1972, both in engineering from Kyoto University, and a Dr.Eng. degree from Osaka University in 2005.

During his time in elementary school, one of his teachers suggested that he read The Chemical History of a Candle by Michael Faraday, and this sparked a multitude of questions for Yoshino regarding chemistry, a subject he had not been interested in prior to reading the book.

During his college years, Yoshino had attended a course taught by Japanese chemist Kenichi Fukui, the first recipient of East Asian ancestry to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Career Yoshino spent his entire non-academic career at Asahi Kasei Corporation. Immediately after graduating with his master's degree in 1972, Yoshino began working at Asahi Kasei. Polyacetylene is the electroconductive polymer discovered by Hideki Shirakawa, who later (in 2000) would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for its discovery.

In 1983 Yoshino fabricated a prototype rechargeable battery using lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO) (discovered in 1979 by Godshall et al. at Stanford University, and John Goodenough and Koichi Mizushima at Oxford University) as cathode and polyacetylene as anode.

This was the birth of the current lithium-ion battery. Yoshino described challenges and history of the invention process in a book chapter from 2014.

Yoshino discovered that carbonaceous material with a certain crystalline structure was suitable as anode material, which formed a passivation layer to enable high cell voltage at low cost, and developed the functional separator membrane and the use of a positive temperature coefficient (PTC) device for additional safety.

Recognition 1998 Chemical Technology Prize from the Chemical Society of Japan 2011: C&C Prize from the NEC C&C Foundation 2012: IEEE Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies from the IEEE 2013: Global Energy Prize 2014: Charles Stark Draper Prize 2018: Japan Prize 2019: European Inventor Award 2019: Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019, 2020: Asian Scientist 100 2023: VinFuture Prize