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bulletin cover story A123 Systems: Eight hard years for an ‘overnight success’ An interview with Yet-Ming Chiang A123 Systems is currently one of the leading advanced-technology bat- tery companies in the United States. The company, winner of the ACerS 2009 Corporate Technical Achievement Award, manufactures powerful lithium batteries based on a proprietary nanophosphate technology. Although A123 has been in existence only eight years, its products already have made inroads in the power tools, transportation and energy grid sectors. Its batteries can range in size from small packs for rechargeable drills to trunk-sized kits for hybrid automobiles to tractor- trailer-scale systems for electrical utilities. Although privately owned since it was cofounded in 2001 by ACerS Fellow Yet-Ming Chiang along with Bart Riley and Ric Fulop, A123 made business headlines just weeks ago when shares of the company were first offered for sale in the stock markets and A123 Systems cofounders, from left, Yet-Ming Chiang, Bart in an eagerly anticipated initial public offerings. Riley and Ric Fulop, along with CEO David Vieau. But the IPO wasn’t the only big news for A123 in 2009. In August, it was one of only a few U.S. companies selected Chiang, who is a full-time professor at MIT, was recently in- by the Department of Energy to receive a major grant to help terviewed by Bulletin editor Peter Wray about how he became them evolve into businesses that can compete worldwide in the a ceramist, the evolution of the science behind A123 batter- vehicle advanced-battery market. ies and what it’s like to be both a researcher and successful entrepreneur. ACerS 2009 Corporate Technical Achievement Award an you explain how you first The Society established its Corporate Technical Achievement C became interested in materials Award to recognize a single outstanding achievement made by an ACerS corporate member in the field of ceramics. and ceramics? Indeed, A123 Systems’ nanophosphate technology has I came to the U.S. when I was six. shown significant merit and represents a gain to society through its commercialization. My family settled on the East Coast This year, Yet-Ming Chiang, representing A123 Systems – in New Jersey. I ended up at MIT winner of the 2009 CTAA – will make a presentation on the in 1976. My sister was already at award-winning technology at 8:20 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 27, as part of ACerS Emerging Opportunities for Ceramic Sci- MIT. I decided to major in materi- ence and Engineering Session. als, because, even in high school, I Chiang will also participate in a panel discussion during the Opening Session of MS&T’09 on Monday, Oct. 26. The panel had an interest in metallurgy. I did will begin following the keynote presentations. a lot experiments in my bedroom Both events will take place in the David L. Lawrence Conven- at home, including, for example, tion Center in Pittsburgh, Pa. learning how to case-harden steel American Ceramic Society Bulletin, Vol. 88, No. 9 23 Yet-Ming Chiang Interview parts. I learned about hardening, received tenure at MIT, I started look- develop, how to because I liked to make machinery and ing around for things to work on. Most design and how little tools and gadgets at home, and of my work up until then had been on to engineer these I found that they actually wore out. I the fundamental aspects of ceramics, materials for bet- found this concept of hardening and but I started looking more for research ter batteries. thought, “What a neat thing.” opportunities in areas the DOE today What was the I found out only after coming to would call “use-inspired” research. I time frame this MIT that what was actually going on started thinking about use-inspired was going on? can be found in the phase diagram, that materials. Materials particularly for I believe that allowed this to happen. I learned about new technologies. In the mid-1990s, I our first papers the iron–carbon phase diagram from started to become interested in lithium published on professor Robert Olgilvie. As I majored battery material, because there was an battery materi- in materials science and engineering, a eye-opening collaboration I had at that als were in the lot of the really interesting research at time with three other MIT faculty, mid-1990s, in the that time was in ceramic materials. Gerbrand Ceder, Donald Sadoway and 1995–1997 time I started working with David Kingery Anne Mayes. frame. My work as an undergraduate. I was a junior at What I started to learn was that with A123 started the time, but I spent my sophomore many of the materials that stored in the 1999–2000 summer in an internship at a West lithium were, in fact, oxide compounds. time frame. In Coast company. They really didn’t These were ceramic compounds. They my lab, we were know what to do with MIT undergradu- weren’t much thought of as ceramics, working on a ates who were relatively untrained and but they were used in an engineered- couple of different A123’s aftermarket Hymotion packs can convert standard hybrid automobiles into plug-in vehicles. unskilled. So I spent much of the sum- powder form. The fact is that lithium concepts related Some plug-in hybrids can achieve over 100 miles per gallon of gasoline mer enjoying the California sunshine cobalt oxide, then the baseline material to batteries. One but also coming to the realization that for positive electrodes for lithium-ion developed as I learned something about I’d better go figure out what to do with batteries, is an ordered rocksalt com- how batteries were made. It’s a fairly my life. When I came back to MIT pound. What was interesting was that, straightforward process. that fall, I decided to try out a couple having done earlier research in my Let me back up here. First of all, the of research projects. One of them was career on magnesium oxide, a rocksalt vast majority of the materials used in with David Kingery, and, in pretty compound, I looked for interesting batteries today are powder-based. These short order, it really developed into a technological examples of rocksalt are powders, maybe ceramic powders, passion of mine. compounds. Frankly, there weren’t that carbon powder, occasionally silicon or I was supervised at the time by the many. Spinels, for sure. Perovskites, metal powders. There is a lot of powder late Anders Henriksen who completed there were many. But rocksalt com- processing and suspension formulation his Ph.D under Kingery. pounds – there just weren’t all that going on in this field, which, of course, Kingery sent me to the University of many materials of commerce. also is near and dear to the hearts of Texas at Austin to do an experiment The fact that lithium cobalt oxide ceramists. The manufacturing process with an Auger spectrometer that pro- is an ordered rocksalt compound that involves making laminates and winding fessor Harris Marcus had in his lab. I plays a central role in technology them into laminated cells. went to Austin, Texas, for three days of caught my research and teaching inter- We started thinking about how to experiments, came back, and published est. But, I went on to find out that control colloid chemistry and to do my first paper in 1981 – a paper on spinel compounds, lithium manganese something very radical, which is to try grain-boundary segregation in magne- spinel, a structure near and dear to the to get batteries to self organize. The sium oxide. That’s where I really got heart of ceramists, was also a founda- idea of this came out of research I had started in the ceramics field. tional material in lithium-ion technol- done over a number of years on surface Later, I went on to graduate school ogy. Subsequently, olivines, as well. forces with colleagues such as Roger at MIT and became an assistant profes- So it began with this interest in French at DuPont, Cannon and others, sor in 1984. It was a magical time to oxide compounds for positive-electrode who had spent many years thinking be in ceramics because I and others materials for lithium-ion batteries, and about interfacial forces. French was the were surround by luminaries, such as the recognition that these compounds first to expose me to the symbol A123 for Kingery, Rowland Cannon, Robert were certainly ceramic compounds. the Hamaker constant scaling the van Coble, Donald Uhlmann and Kent Many of the researchers in the field der Waals force between two dissimilar Bowen. were not from ceramics, and, so, I materials, 1 and 3, separated by mate- So, at some point you start becom- thought there was a lot of room for rial 2. ing interested in lithium materials? research and innovation, and tak- Of course, this was also central to In the early 1990s, after I had ing a ceramics perspective on how to much of the ceramics research around 24 American Ceramic Society Bulletin, Vol. 88, No. 9 phate, that family was used by the Vodaphone McLaren- of compounds. Mercedes team. We wanted to So, high-powered batteries have see if we could use come a very long way. The emphasis the properties in [before 2000] in lithium-ion batteries a way to produce had been toward relatively low-powered a self-organizing but long run-time devices. We thought system. In the there was an opportunity to address an end, we were able entirely different application area. Not to produce an cell phones, laptops and PDAs.

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