Illustration of the Japanese chemist Akira Yoshino (born 1948). Yoshino is known for his work on finding a lighter and smaller replacement for rechargeable nickel-cadmium (NiCd) batteries. He created his first lithium-ion batteries in the early 1980s. They used a lithium cobalt oxide cathode and a polyacetylene anode. Although lighter than NiCd batteries, they were no smaller. By replacing the polyacetylene with a vapour grown carbon fibre (VGCF) anode he was able to produce the first commercially viable lithium-ion battery in the early 1990s. Yoshino was awarded a share of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work along with M. Stanley Whittingham and John Goodenough.