A plastic-like battery component can increase its electrical conductivity by 100,000 times just by interacting with sodium.
Organic batteries are environmentally friendly because they don't use heavy metals, but they usually conduct electricity too poorly to be useful. Researchers found that adding sodium to a hydroxylated organic cathode causes the molecules to repack themselves into a highly conductive grid. This shift increases the material's ability to move electrons by five orders of magnitude. The result is a metal-free battery that can charge and discharge fast enough for high-power devices. This could lead to a new generation of sustainable batteries made from common organic materials.
Activation of Hydroxylated Organic Cathodes Enables High-Rate Sodium Batteries
ChemRxiv · chemrxiv.15002325/v1
Organic cathodes are poised to lower transition metal burdens for producing sodium-ion and sodium metal batteries, yet most struggle to achieve premium performance due to low ionic and electronic conductivity. Maintaining a high concentration of mobile sodium ions in redox-active solids for fast ion transport at all states of charge remains a challenge, as does ensuring a high spin density to facilitate long-range electron transport. Here, we show that sodiation of hydroxylated organic cathode m