Organic electrode materials for printable battery applications

Yuyin Xi,  Pablo de la Iglesia,  Lilo Pozzo
University of Washington


Abstract

Printable batteries have attracted a lot of interest recently because they can be integrated with other printed electronic devices (OLEDs, OFETs, OPVs, etc) while maintaining their commonly listed nature at the same time: cost effective, light, flexible and compatible with reel-to-reel processing for large volume productions. However, the few successful demonstrations of printed batteries mostly use inorganic electrodes such as Zn and LiCoO2. Conjugated polymers can provide an alternative approach to fabricate electrode materials. In our lab, an easy, novel, and economic method has been developed to synthesize organic solvent dispersions of nanostructured conjugated polymers such as poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) and Polypyrrole (Ppy) having high surface area densities. Dispersion in organic solvents simplifies the formulation and coating of cathodes. Cyclic voltammetry was conducted in coin cells with lithium metal as a reference anode and redox behaviors was observed for all the polymers. By assembling the polymer materials into half cell batteries, their intrinsic capacities were determined and related to their structure. Several factors were analyzed to contribute to the difference in the battery performances: conductivity, dopants, surface areas and packing densities, etc. Impedance spectroscopy measurements were used to infer the conductivities of the materials that makeup the half-cells. Small angle neutron and x-ray scattering (SANS, USANS and SAXS/WAXS) was used to probe the nanostructure and differences in surface areas over a wide range of length scales.