Search for greener Li-ion batteries: an alternative offered by organic electroactive materials

摘要

The threats of climate change and the issues of secure energy supply are among the fundamental challenges of the 21stcentury that push humanity to adopt a sustainable development and to favour the use of renewable sources of energy. In addition to their historical use, LIBs seem on the road to power the next "Zero Emission" vehicles or could be used to assist the integration of renewable energy sources both on- and off-the-grid. Consequently, production of LIBs is expected to keep on growing. However LIBs are nearly exclusively based on inorganic compounds, non-renewable and energy-greedy materials. Thus in parallel with regular research on inorganic-based LIBs, we have recently proposed to probe an alternative pathway by searching for redox-active organic materials, easier to discard while possibly derived from biomass resources. As solid-state electrochemistry of organics is not that well documented, our current approach consists in a global survey of selected organic structures in order to grasp relevant parameters that affect the redox potential, the stability upon cycling and so on. In this report, we extend our current database of redox-active organic structures by evaluating vs. Li bulky pyrazine-based structures and dilithium polyporate as a supplementary specimen of p-benzoquinone derivatives.