PhD student Anatoliy Vereshchagin and co-authors, under supervision by Prof. Dr. Oleg Levin have developed an organic cathode material based on new redox-conducting polymer [Ni(Salen)]-TEMPO. A new synthetic approach allowed to obtain a cathode with capacity reaching up to 91.5 mA h g^-1 and high stability: the electrode retains 66% of initial capacity after 2000 recharging cycles. The main feature of the obtained material is combination of two types of organic capacitive species - a conductive backbone based on nickel complex with Schiff base and redox-active nitroxyl-containing fragments. Because of this the material is capable of fast charge/discharge: the capacity retention is 87% of maximal value at 800 C current density (charge (discharge) in 4.5 seconds) and 30% at 3000 C (charge (discharge) in 1.2 seconds).

Mixing several types of electrochemically active species in one molecule is an crucial step in development of eco-friendly purely organic batteries of the next generation. The combination of a conductive polymer as a backbone and a capacitive redox constituent TEMPO allows to achieve high capacity and recharging rate simultaneously.

The illustration to this work made by PhD student himself is feature as a cover art of Batteries & Supercaps issue 2/2021.

This work was supported by RSCF grant #19-19-00175 and RFBR grant #20-33-90122.

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