Interdisciplinary research of materials and energy in honor of Nobel laureate John B. Goodenough

As we know, Prof John B. Goodenough discovered almost all the commercial cathode materials, LiCoO2, LiMn2O4, and LiFePO4, for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Nowadays, LIBs have been extensively used in our daily life, which provide power for mobile phones, laptop computers, electric vehicles, energy storage systems, and so forth. The discovery of LIBs is believed as one of the most important inventions in the 20th century. Expectedly, he won the Nobel prize in chemistry in 2019 together with M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino. Their pioneering contributions have created a rechargeable world for our modern society. Proposed by the Editors-in-Chief Prof Qingjie Zhang and Zhengyi Fu, the journal “Interdisciplinary Materials” organizes a special issue on “Interdisciplinary research of materials and energy in honor of Nobel laureate John B. Goodenough” to celebrate his 100th birthday on July 25, 2022. In this special issue, Prof Goodenough's former students, postdoctoral researchers, and academic friends have contributed a total of seven articles, covering the areas of high-energy LIBs, low-cost sodium-ion batteries (SIBs), and high-safety solid-state batteries. We not only show our great respect to him for his big contribution and scientific spirit, but also try to clarify the relationship among the interdisciplines including physics, chemistry, materials, and energy from the views of the discovery and development of rechargeable batteries. Yunhui Huang clues Goodenough's early career in solid-state physics, the later research on rechargeable batteries and the corresponding energy materials, and tries to verify that the original ideas of LiCoO2, LiMn2O4, and LiFePO4 came from his early research in solid-state physics and from his strong knowledge in chemical structure and bonding. Some examples have been given to demonstrate the importance of interdisciplinary interactions among materials, chemistry, and physics for rechargeable batteries and other electrochemical devices. For LIBs, energy density, safety, and recycling are the most concerning issues for practical applications. Weidong Zhou et al. summarize the recent progress on the popular high-energy cathode materials NCM (LiNixCoyMnzO2, x + y + z = 1) derived from LiCoO2, and share the modification strategies of coating, doping, and single crystallization to achieve high performances for commercial use. Shi-Xue Dou et al. focus on gallium-based liquid metals with high capacity and self-healing capability and discuss their developments, applications, and future opportunities in LIB systems. Xing-Long Wu and Yichun Liu et al. introduce the current status and challenges of recycling LIBs, give insight into the future course of full lifecycle management of LIBs, and propose gradient utilization and recycling-target predesign strategies. All-solid-state Li metal batteries have been considered as the most promising candidates for next-generation energy storage devices due to their high energy density and safety. Li-Zhen Fan et al. have fabricated scalable polyimide film reinforced asymmetric ultrathin composite solid electrolyte, and achieved stable cyclability in Li/Li symmetric cell, Li/NCM, and Li/LiFePO4 solid-state batteries. SIBs are potential next-generation rechargeable batteries, which can partially substitute LIBs in the future by considering lithium resources and cost. Goodenough had early work on sodium-based batteries and recently has a lot of work to develop electrode materials for SIBs. It should be pointed out that superionic conductor (NASICON) was proposed in principle by Goodenough et al. in 1976, which has aroused tremendous attention as solid-state electrolytes. Feng Wu and Hongcai Gao et al. summarize recent research progress and challenges in the terms of electrolytes, cathode, and anode materials for SIBs operating at low temperatures, and provide the prospect of fundamental research and exploitation of SIBs with high performance for practical applications. Yong-Sheng Hu et al. outline the state-of-the-art findings for various derivatives of NASICON structured solid electrolytes and provide a deep understanding of the underlying mechanism for the improvement of solid electrolytes and solid-state batteries. Although only several articles are published in this special issue, we can clearly see the history and development of rechargeable batteries triggered by Prof Goodenough. Meanwhile, it can be concluded that the interdisciplinary sciences covering physics, chemistry, materials, energy, engineering, and even artificial intelligence play important roles not only in the discovery of cathode materials as well as LIBs but also in the future development and applications for rechargeable batteries. We celebrate Prof Goodenough's 100th birthday via this issue, while most importantly, we hope we can learn from his academic thought and spirit to make our contributions to a new rechargeable world.