(2020-03-04) Bridges, Colin; Stolar, Monika; Baumgartner, Thomas
The adoption of intermittent renewable power sources has placed battery technologies into the limelight, initiating a push to develop sustainable materials for energy storage that do not rely on rare or toxic elements. Organic electrode materials are made from abundant elements that are consumed in the biomass cycle, which can make large-scale manufacturing and recycling of these materials less detrimental to the environment. Herein, we explore how organic, electroactive phosphoryl-bridged viologens (phosphaviologens) can be composited with single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and used as organic electrodes composed of sustainable/abundant materials. To this end, we have functionalized phosphaviologens that exhibit two stable and reversible reductions with pendant pyrene moieties to interface them with carbon nanotubes. The anchoring of the redox active species on the surface of SWCNTs prevents electrode dissolution, and hybrid batteries with a high voltage (1.95- 3.5 V) versus Li/Li+ using phosphaviologens as the cathode remain stable past 500 charge/discharge cycles.