Lithium
Element 3 · chemical symbol: Li
These Vrulum profiles mention Lithium by name. Read each profile for its specific context; a mention alone does not establish composition, performance or use of the pure element.
For periodic-table data and other properties, consult the Royal Society of Chemistry periodic table.
Related technology profiles
Lithium-ion batteries
Lithium-ion batteries store and release electricity by moving lithium ions between two electrodes, and they power electric cars. Their cost and energy density keep changing, but fire risk, dependence on nickel-containing chemistries and recycling that is still developing remains an open limit.
Photonic integrated circuits
Photonic integrated circuits put lasers, waveguides, modulators and detectors on a single chip so that light, rather than only electricity, carries and processes signals. Silicon photonics has established foundry access, and Broadcom's 2025 co-packaged optics switch uses silicon photonics engines. Thin-film lithium niobate and indium phosphide serve other functions.
Smart textiles
Smart textiles are fabrics with sensors, displays, memory or batteries built into the yarn or fibre itself. Lab demonstrations from 2021 to 2026 show textile displays, sensing fibres and fibre-shaped chips, and at least one garment with fabric sensors is sold, but washing durability is still hard to compare across studies.
Sodium-ion batteries
Sodium-ion batteries store energy by shuttling sodium ions between two electrodes, much as lithium-ion batteries do with lithium. They use abundant materials and manufacturers now claim early mass production, but they still store less energy per kilogram than the best lithium-ion cells.
Solid-state batteries
Solid-state batteries replace the liquid electrolyte in a conventional lithium-ion cell with a solid material. The proposed benefits include higher energy density. The sources reviewed here describe materials and processing challenges that remain open, and they give no verified cost figures for commercial cells.
Structural batteries
A structural battery stores electrical energy while also carrying mechanical loads, for example in a composite panel whose carbon fibres act as electrodes. Laboratory cells have reported energy densities from about 30 to 187 Wh/kg, depending on design, electrolyte and mass basis, and high stiffness, but no complete vehicle or aircraft powered by a load-bearing battery structure has been demonstrated in the sources reviewed.
Thin-film lithium niobate photonics
Thin-film lithium niobate is a chip platform in which light is guided and switched in a thin layer of an electro-optic crystal. Laboratory modulators have carried data at up to 210 gigabits per second, and the same platform makes frequency combs, but commercial foundry supply is only starting and most company performance figures have not been independently checked.
Vehicle-to-grid
Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) lets an electric car send power from its battery back to a home or the grid, not only take power in. A few UK and Dutch schemes are running, but the evidence on whether discharging speeds up battery wear is mixed, and most of it comes from lab cells or simulations.