Redox Active Organic Liquids for Energy Storage
Authors: Castro Trujillo Angelina , Jethwa Rajesh Bharat , Stadlbauer Stefan , Valentin Julia , Freunberger Stefan A 
Published: February 2024

The necessity to move to renewable energy sources has increased over the last few years. However, to ensure a good transition and effective energy supply, efficient, cheap, and green technologies are required as grid-level storage.1 Redox-Active Organic Materials (ROMs) are a fast-growing research topic in different electrochemical storage devices. Their advantageous characteristics of being formed from highly abundant elements, having a high electrochemical tunability, ease of handling and device processing, and high versatility for a variety of energy storage applications make ROMs attractive.1–3

Redox-Active Liquids (RALs) are themselves a new trend within the category of ROMs because the physical properties of organic liquids are advantageous for some storage devices.4–6 Those advantages include no requirement for materials processing after synthesis, high miscibility and/or high solubility with battery electrolytes, the ability to be used as a solvent themselves without any additional additives,4,5 and the avoidance of surface-related changes e.g., dendrites.7 RALs have been studied as mediators or active materials in the context of different applications such as supercapacitors,6,8 conventional,4,5,9 and hybrid-flow batteries.10,11 In this work, we present the synthesis and physio-chemical characterization of different RALs that can be used in such energy storage devices. The characterization results supported by computational analyses were used to investigate the correlation between the chemical structure and the electrochemical properties of the compounds. The obtained information was then further used to inform the design of further compounds with enhanced electrochemical properties.

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