Symmetric All-Quinone Aqueous Battery
Authors: Jing Yan , Tong Liuchuan , Aziz Michael J. , Gordon Roy G. 
Published: February 2020

Lithium-ion batteries continue to dominate portable electronics and electric vehicles markets for its high energy density/specific energy.1However, combustible electrolytes and expensive cathodes pose safety and cost concerns to consumers.2 Further cost reduction is expected to be limited after decades of development.3Next generation energy storage devices call for safe, cheap, resource-abundant and flexible batteries.2, 4 Rechargeable batteries with cost-effective redox active materials and aqueous electrolytes can potentially meet these requirements.5 Aqueous battery chemistries include lead-acid batteries, nickel-metal hydride aqueous batteries, and emerging aqueous lithium/sodium-ion batteries, but they all have their Achilles’ heels.6
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Here we report a symmetric all-quinone aqueous battery based entirely on Earth-abundant elements that uses a naturally-occurring dye as the redox-active material in both positive and negative electrodes. We demonstrate a symmetric all-quinone cell with 1.04 V of open circuit voltage, 163 mAh/g of capacity, and 100 cycles at 10C with 100% of depth of discharge. The use of the same quinone in a symmetric setup expands the repertoire of inexpensive redox active materials for aqueous rechargeable batteries, and the simple cell design will enable optimizations toward safe, cheap, lightweight, and flexible electronics in the future. Natural abundance and cheap commercial source promise its low cost when produced at large scale. In addition, we demonstrate that other fused quinone derivatives can also be used for symmetric quinone-acid batteries. Further optimization of fused quinones with improved reduction potential and stability, and cell engineering of electrode composition and morphology can further improve the performance of the battery.

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Figure 1