Materials science is one of the lessor known (to the general public) but often most important areas of science.
Worth repeating. The modern world would not exist w/o the energy density of lithium ion tech. Smartphones ,tablets, laptops,drones,medical devices, robot anything. Simply cannot exist without lithium ion tech or more accurately 200+wh/kg energy density. That is the enabling factor. Nickel cadmium nor nickel metal hydride has the energy density for these things. Even without EVs third and fourth generation ion cells will be coming to market it’s a trillion dollar market for power cells. Lithium has had 30 years of development since they where invented by UT Austin. With AI able to test millions of chemicals and crystalline structures in hours what would take humans years to randomly select it won’t be 10 years or even 5 till next gen cells come to market. Case in point sodium ion went from lab bench to in low cost Chinese EVs in under 5 years with energy density equal to lithium Iron phosphates which itself is under ten years old. Lithium sulfur is in small batch production already, same for aluminum graphene. The world is based on power cells and the market is hot, university of Queensland solved the $1000kg graphene problem they commercialized natural gas to graphene in bulk quantities cheap enough to make cells for the U.S. DOD once it’s released to the general public AlGr cells have triple density vs lithium and take tens of thousands of cycles with 60+C charge rates. It’s little wonder the military is going to put them in drones they are superior to every other battery tech on the planet. It’s not if it’s when at this point.