Cobalt "goblin", a superstitious term used for the ore of cobalt by miners. The first attempts to smelt those ores for copper or nickel failed, yielding simply powder (cobalt(II) oxide) instead. Because the primary ores of cobalt always contain arsenic, smelting the ore oxidized the arsenic into the highly toxic and volatile arsenic oxide, adding to the notoriety of the ore. Swedish chemist Georg Brandt (1694–1768) is credited with discovering cobalt circa 1735, showing it to be a previously unknown element, different from bismuth and other traditional metals. Brandt called it a new "semi-metal". He showed that compounds of cobalt metal
Lithium cobalt oxide Lithium cobalt oxide Lithium cobalt oxide, sometimes called lithium cobaltate or lithium cobaltite, is a chemical compound with formula . The cobalt atoms are formally in the +3 oxidation state, hence the IUPAC name lithium cobalt(III) oxide. Lithium cobalt oxide is a dark blue or bluish-gray crystalline solid, and is commonly used in the positive electrodes of lithium-ion batteries. The structure of has been studied with numerous techniques including x-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, neutron powder diffraction, and EXAFS. The solid consists of layers of monovalent lithium cations () that lie between extended anionic sheets of cobalt and oxygen atoms, arranged