Redox-active organic materials could be useful in battery electrodes for realizing higher energy densities and faster-charging batteries. However, the design of freestanding electrodes using redox-active materials has been limited by their poor intrinsic electrical conductivity and a lack of practical routes for incorporating conductive substrates.
Yeongseok Oh, Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS), Changwon, Soojin Park, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Korea, and colleagues have developed a single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) aerogel with a continuous network and a high surface area that can act as an electrically conducting scaffold for organic molecules. The researchers used wet chemical methods to fabricate the aerogel. Electrodes were then created by coating the aerogel scaffold with a thin layer of an imide-based network (IBN) that contains an abundance of redox-active sites.
The electrodes provide a high electrical conductance through a three-dimensional electronic pathway. The thin IBN layer on the surface of the electrode had a strong adhesion to the conductive substrate and facilitates multielectron redox reactions to deliver a specific capacity of up to 1550 mA h g–1. The electrode does not show any capacity decay or structural failure after 800 cycles.
- Three-Dimensional Monolithic Organic Battery Electrodes,
Jaegeon Ryu, Byeongho Park, Jieun Kang, Dongki Hong, Sung-Dae Kim, Jung-Keun Yoo, Jin Woo Yi, Soojin Park, Youngseok Oh,
ACS Nano 2019.
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.9b07807
