Issue 31, 2020

All-PEGylated redox-active metal-free organic molecules in non-aqueous redox flow battery

Abstract

Non-aqueous organic material-based redox flow batteries (NAORFBs) possess the advantage of using organic solvents to achieve high electrochemical potential. However, regardless of the great progress made in this regard in the past decade, further development has been restricted by the lack of stable electroactive organic materials and highly selective separators. Here, we present a NAORFB with all-PEGylated, metal-free, organic compounds as electroactive materials. PEGylated phenothiazine and PEGylated viologen are utilized as the catholyte and anolyte, respectively. Combined with a composite nanoporous aramid nanofiber separator, the all-PEGylated NAORFB presents outstanding cyclability, with a capacity retention of 99.90% per cycle and average coulombic efficiency of 99.7%. By contrast, NAORFBs using half-PEGylated and non-PEGylated electrolytes display inferior cyclability owing to the crossover of non-PEGylated materials. An extended investigation was also performed on the batteries using non-PEGylated or half-PEGylated materials for mechanistic elucidation. This work validates the PEGylation strategy in NAORFBs for enhanced overall performance with respect to solubility, cyclability, and alleviated crossover.

Graphical abstract: All-PEGylated redox-active metal-free organic molecules in non-aqueous redox flow battery

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
26 פבר 2020
Accepted
17 מרץ 2020
First published
17 מרץ 2020

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2020,8, 15715-15724

Author version available

All-PEGylated redox-active metal-free organic molecules in non-aqueous redox flow battery

J. Chai, A. Lashgari, X. Wang, C. K. Williams and J. “. Jiang, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2020, 8, 15715 DOI: 10.1039/D0TA02303E

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements