Just last year, John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino were awarded the Nobel peace prize in chemistry for the invention of the lithium-ion battery. Now, researchers are already exploring a cheaper, more easily produced alternative, the Sodium-ion battery. The sodium-ion battery has the potential to be especially useful in large-scale energy storage but researchers are still running into some problems. Right now, lithium-ion batteries have the advantage over sodium-ion: they last longer, and they hold more energy. Only time will tell if the sodium-ion battery will become competitive with the lithium-ion battery, but if it does, it would be a potential game changer.
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