Flexible, Free Standing Integrated Conductive Network/Current Collector Organic Radical Polymer Electrode

Organic radical batteries (ORBs) are emerging as high-rate capable, designable, environmentally friendly, and promising power for thin film batery. An ORB is composed of at least one of its electrodes based on radical polymer or organic radical as the active material. The first report of ORB was by Nakahara et al. in 2002 1. The n-type radical polymer can serve as the anode active material, while the p-type radical polymer, which usually bearing repeating units of nitroxide radicals, can be employed as the cathode active material. The charging process of the p-type radical polymer based cathode corresponds to the one-electron oxidation of the nitroxide radicals to the oxoammonium cations, with electrolyte anions providing the counter-charge. Upon discharge, the reverse processes occur. However, the organic radical polymer electrode suffers from low energy density because of the low electronic conductive of the active polymer material, leading to require a lot of conductive carbon (>60 wt%) should be added to the electrode fabrication. In order to improve the energy density of the radical polymer electrode, we develop a new conducting network/current collector integrated electrode. The electrode possesses higher energy density (active material > 50 wt%), flexible and free standing, that is quite promising for thin film battery application. The results and details will be presented in the meeting. This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21103109, No. 21373137), Shanghai Science and Technology Talent Program(No. 12XD1421900). Reference K. Nakahara et al Chem. Phys. Lett. 359, 351 (2002). T. Katsumata et al Macromolecules 41,1175 (2008).