Imagining Circular Organic Batteries

Metals are essential ingredients in today’s Li-ion batteries (LIBs), but their continued use presents economic, ethical, and environmental challenges. Projected shortages of cobalt and nickel in the coming decades may cause increased prices, and the global supply chain of these metals, lithium included, is highly localized. The last few years have brought attention to the harsh conditions of and use of child labor in the extraction of some these materials, adding social and ethical concerns. Compounded with the increasing demand for LIBs brought by the expanding electric vehicle market and rapid digitalization of society, there is an imminent need to address these issues. Society must now begin to consider the implications of a LIB’s full life cycle, including the carbon footprint, the economic and environmental costs, and material access. These challenges motivate the case for degradable or recyclable batteries sourced from earth-abundant materials whose life cycle bears minimal impact on the environment. This talk imagines how polymers might contribute to the future circular battery economy. We focus first upon our work on radical-containg polymer batteries, which offers a metal-free battery platform. These concepts are then translated to degradable metal-free organic batteries comprised of redox-active synthetic polypeptide cathodes and anodes. Specifically, the cathode polypeptide was decorated with nitroxide radicals, and the anode polypeptide was decorated with viologen groups. With the addition of an acid, the battery degraded on command, yielding amino acids and other byproducts. Although degradation offers a means to deconstruct batteries, recycling still remains a challenge. This talk closes with current and ongiong recyling approaches for polymer-based batteries and their future prospects. Taken together, polymeric materials offer a path toward the local sourcing, manufacturing, and recycling of batteries to democratize energy storage in global economies.