The development of much more efficient, next-generation lithium-ion batteries, with higher energy densities and longer life cycles, was just one of several significant innovations made by Mino Green, emeritus professor of electrical device science at Imperial College London, who has died aged 95.

In the early 2000s, the advent of smartphones, mobile computing, and the distant possibility of ubiquitous electric cars, led to increased research into higher density energy storage. Two potential candidates for higher energy densities were the lithium-oxygen battery, which promised the highest possible theoretical energy density, and the lithium-silicon battery. Research at the time showed that both suffered from issues relating to cycle life – that is the number of times the battery could be recharged without losing significant capacity.

In the case of lithium-silicon batteries the problem was the volume increase of the silicon anode when lithiated during charging. As the battery discharges, lithium leaves the silicon anode, causing it to shrink. Repeated charge-discharge cycles crack the silicon and lead to rapidly diminishing battery performance.

At this time, Green should have already been well into retirement, but instead had kept up an active programme of research at Imperial. One of his postdoctoral researchers, Feng-Ming Liu, showed him electron microscope images of high aspect-ratio silicon nanostructures produced during one of their experiments. While the results were of no use to their current project, Green realised that the silicon nanostructures had the potential to solve the issue of cycle-life in lithium-silicon batteries.

The production process was considered scalable and, in 2006, Green founded a research and development company, Nexeon, to commercialise silicon anode nanomaterials for use in batteries.

This was the same year that the Tesla Roadster, one of the earliest modern electric cars, was unveiled and a year before the announcement of the first iPhone.

The timing was perfect, and investors flocked to fund further research and, following production of the world’s highest capacity cells for their size in 2011, the construction of production facilities. Today, Nexeon counts some of the world’s largest corporations in the battery and automotive market, including Panasonic, Toyota and SKC, as its partners.

Mino was born in New York, the son of Alexander and Elizabeth Greenberg, and his early years were spent between New York and Paris, where his two sisters were born. His father had been serving in the White Russian Army when he and his wife were evacuated from the Crimea in November 1920, leaving them as stateless refugees. In 1939 they settled in London, Mino’s father working as a jewellery and antiques dealer and his mother as a seamstress, and the family anglicising their surname to Green.

Mino showed an early interest in and aptitude for science, and went from Dulwich college to study chemistry at Durham University at the age of 17. In 1945, having just turned 18 and still a US citizen, he was called up for duty by the US Navy and set sail on a troop carrier to enlist. On his arrival in the US, the authorities informed him that, with the war over, his service would no longer be required. He instead went to Harvard University to continue studying, before returning to complete his degree at Durham in 1948. He then embarked on a PhD in radiochemistry, graduating in 1951.

Within the same week, he received his PhD, married Diana Allen, and set off by boat to the US to take up a position at the MIT Lincoln Lab, where he worked alongside several of the scientists who had been involved in the Manhattan Project. He was engaged in the then novel field of semiconductors, publishing groundbreaking work on the surface properties of germanium and silicon.

In 1955 he briefly took up a position at Imperial College London, before returning the following year to the US where he worked as division chief at the Zenith Radio Research Corporation in Chicago, Illinois, developing technology for colour television and the emerging micro-electronics industry.

In 1960 he was made associate director of the University of Pennsylvania electrochemistry lab, where he stayed until Zenith asked him to set up a research laboratory for them in London in 1962. During his time in the US, he published several seminal papers on the electrochemistry of the semiconductor-electrolyte interface, and subsequently contributed to our understanding of electrical transport phenomena, photoconductivity and thermoelectricity.

The 1960s were the heyday for Zenith, when it was the largest maker of black and white television sets in the US. In the 70s, international competition increased, leading to rounds of cost-cutting that saw Green return to Imperial College in 1972. He was appointed professor of electrical device science in 1983, took over the optical and semiconductor devices group and continued his research on semiconductors, as well as the electrochromic properties of various material systems. This ultimately led to several patents on electrochromic glass, allowing the light transmissivity of the glass to be altered electrically. The technology was commercialised by St Gobain, the world’s largest manufacturer of glass, for the construction, automotive and industrial sectors.

Green had a knack for devising simple experiments to test a hypothesis when costly research infrastructure was not available and he was keenly interested in scientific and engineering problems outside, as well as within, his own field of expertise, continuing to work for 30 years after his nominal retirement in 1992. He viewed the commercialisation of research as a civic duty rather than a means of personal enrichment and evaluated potential new ventures from his research developments well into his 90s.

Diana died in 2012. Green is survived by his daughter, Penny, and son, David, and four grandchildren.

• Mino Green, scientist, born 10 March 1927; died 13 October 2022