Electrochemical energy storage devices play important roles in storing and delivering efficient and reliable energy in portable devices, electrical vehicles, and electricity grids that are pivotal to our daily life and the economical development of the modern society. Undoubtedly, costs, performance, and lifetime of energy storage devices essentially rely on the discovery of novel materials. This symposium focuses on materials design, applications, and fundamental understanding of organic materials including molecules and polymers in metal ion batteries, redox flow batteries, and organic rechargeable batteries. Organic materials are typically made from earth abundant elements, and thus their production can be sustainable and inexpensive. More importantly, considering well-developed synthetic organic chemistry, organic materials can be ingeniously designed and synthetically modulated to achieve unique and unprecedented physical and chemical properties. Organic materials can find numerous key applications in battery devices. In Li ion batteries, supporting electrolytes, electrolyte additives, electrode polymer binders, and electrode additives enbble fast charge transfer thus high conductivity, improving SEI stability, and improving battery cycling life. In organic redox flow batteries and organic rechargeable batteries, redox active organic molecules are charge storage carriers and their redox potential, charge capacity, and stability directly impact battery performance. In addition, organic membranes and separators are an important component for all battery designs, and their performance is directly correlated to their molecular structures.

Invited presentations will emphasize materials design, battery performance, spectroscopic studies, and computational modeling of organic materials to understand their solution and interfacial chemistry in representative energy storage devices. It is fundamentally important to implement physical organic chemistry in designing organic materials for electrochemical energy storage applications. The symposium aims to invoke an in-depth discussion on how electronic and steric factors, solvation effect, and intermolecular interactions affect chemical and electrochemical characteristics of organic materials in energy storage devices. The overarching goal of the symposium aims to elucidate and establish a structure-function relationship of organic materials in energy storage devices. It is anticipated that the symposium, at molecular level, will inspire creative solutions to existing challenges in current energy storage technologies, and spark novel ideas in developing new energy storage technologies.

energy storage organic polymer