Electric vehicles and grid batteries keep lifting lithium demand higher each year. Meeting that growth cleanly matters more than ever. Spodumene holds much of the lithium locked inside hard rock deposits spread across Australia, the United States, and Europe. Mines already pull the mineral out of the ground, yet turning it into battery-grade material has always demanded extreme heat and left large piles of leftover rock. A team at MIT changed the script. Materials scientist Yet-Ming Chiang and colleagues mix crushed spodumene with a simple solution of water and ammonium fluoride. The first major step happens at ordinary room temperature.