Recently, redox flow batteries (RFBs) have emerged as one of the promising candidates for safe and economical grid-scale energy storage system (ESS) that store the intermittent energies such as wind or solar energy. Unlike the conventional aqueous vanadium RFBs, the design of new molecules in nonaqueous RFB (NRFB) has been in the spotlight for the high energy density, cycling stability, and low cost. Among the redox active materials, in particular, organic molecule has various structures through functionalization, and thus its redox potential, solubility, and chemical stability can be controlled. However, there are only a few viable negative-side redox electrolyte, called a negolyte (or anolyte) to date, and even the reported negolytes have suffered from low solubility and stability, and severe crossover problems for long-term cycling.

Here we show the systematic design strategies for pyridinium-based organic redox molecule to enhance the its stability and solubility and suppress the crossover rate for NRFB. A benzo[d]thiazole ring, which provides an electron-withdrawing effect, was introduced at the C4 position of pyridinium core by Pd catalyzed C-H arylation. The addition of the π-conjugation system to the pyridinium redox core was key to enhance chemical and electrochemical stability, resulting in negatively low redox potential of -1.19 ~ 1.21 V vs. Fc/Fc⁺. The solubility of pyridinium derivatives was significantly enhanced from 0.26 M to 1.00 M in acetonitrile by simple anion exchange from tetrafluoroborate (BF₄^-) or hexafluorophosphate (PF₆^-) anion to bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (TFSI^-) anion. Moreover, exchanging the functional group on N of pyridinium from methyl group to cationic 3-(trimethylammonio)propyl (TMAP) group suppressed the crossover rate with an anion-exchange membrane in the NRFB. 4-(benzo[d]thaizol-2-yl)-1-(3-(trimethylammonio)propyl)pyridin-1-ium (TMAP-BTP) led to electrochemical stability in symmetric cell, showing a capacity decay rate of 0.0083% per cycle. Contrary to the results of only 60% capacity retention after 100 cycle in full cell with 4-(benzo[d]thaizol-2-yl)-1-methylpyridin-1-ium (BTP) as negolyte, in the case of full cell with TMAP-BTP as negolyte, the capacity retention was significantly increased, showing 89.8 % after 100 cycle, which is ~0.08% capacity decay rate per cycle. In this presentation, I will demonstrate the more detailed design strategies, cycling performances, and electrolyte analysis. (Figure 1).¹

References

1. Ahn, J. H. Jang, J. Kang, M. Na, J. Seo, V. Singh, J. M. Joo and H. R. Byon, ACS Energy Lett., 6, 3390 (2021).