Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) represent one of the most successful battery chemistry with a range of applications starting from small portable electronic devices to advanced electric vehicles. The increasing demands concerning these large-scale applications have generated intense requirements of improved safety, low costs and of course high energy densities. Anode materials generally used in commercial LIBs, i.e. carbonaceous materials, have a very low operating potential (~ 0.1 V vs. Li⁺/Li) which cause some safety and cost issues.

As an alternative, several anode materials have been proposed, such as spinel lithium titanate (Li₄Ti₅O₁₂) which can operate at potentials of 1.0-1.6 V vs. Li⁺/Li, this fact leading to a decrease of the cell voltage, or such as Si and SnO₂, which are confronted to huge volume variation and structural reorganization during charge-discharge process.

In order to achieve the required improvements, anode materials must operate at an intermediate operating potential (0.5-1.0 V vs. Li⁺/Li). In addition there is a growing interest in designing greener LIBs.  In this context, organic carboxylate-based derivatives have been considered as promising materials for the next generation of such greener LIBs due to their structure based on relatively naturally abundant atoms like C, H, O or N, their possible flexible molecular design, ease of recyclability and especially their operating potential allowing to substitute copper-based current collector by aluminum, thus inducing a drastic cost and weight reduction.

We will present an electron-donating substitution approach with the aim to decrease the operating redox potential in benzenedicarboxylate systems. More precisely, dilithium DiMethylTerepthalate compound (Li₂-DMT) was synthesized, fully characterized and evaluated electrochemically as an anode material for Li-ion storage system. This new carboxylate-based material shows promising electrochemical performance, noticeably a stable cycling performance, high thermal stability and an operating potential of 0.65 V vs. Li⁺/Li, (i.e., -110 mV in comparison with Li terephthalate).