A redox-flow battery with an alloxazine-based organic electrolyte

By Kaixiang Lin, Rafael Gómez‐Bombarelli, Eugene S. Beh, Liuchuan Tong, Qing Chen, Alvaro W. Valle, Alán Aspuru-Guzik, M. Aziz, R. Gordon. Nature Energy, 2016

461 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Redox-flow batteries (RFBs) can store large amounts of electrical energy from variable sources, such as solar and wind. Recently, redox-active organic molecules in aqueous RFBs have drawn substantial attention due to their rapid kinetics and low membrane crossover rates. Drawing inspiration from nature, here we report a high-performance aqueous RFB utilizing an organic redox compound, alloxazine, which is a tautomer of the isoalloxazine backbone of vitamin B2. It can be synthesized in high yield at room temperature by single-step coupling of inexpensive o-phenylenediamine derivatives and alloxan. The highly alkaline-soluble alloxazine 7/8-carboxylic acid produces a RFB exhibiting open-circuit voltage approaching 1.2 V and current efficiency and capacity retention exceeding 99.7% and 99.98% per cycle, respectively. Theoretical studies indicate that structural modification of alloxazine with electron-donating groups should allow further increases in battery voltage. As an aza-aromatic molecule that undergoes reversible redox cycling in aqueous electrolyte, alloxazine represents a class of radical-free redox-active organics for use in large-scale energy storage. Redox-flow batteries with organic-based electrolytes hold many advantages over conventional-flow batteries. Here the authors report a high-performance flow battery based on alloxazine, an aqueous-stable and soluble redox-active organic molecule resembling the backbone structure of vitamin B2.

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Citations in the corpus

Unprecedented Capacity and Stability of Ammonium Ferrocyanide Catholyte in pH Neutral Aqueous Redox Flow Batteries (2019, background): “Thus, we envisioned that the ammonium salts of [Fe(CN)6] 3 and [Fe(CN)6] 4 should show higher solubility than their K+ and Na+ salts, which can lead to the development of high-capacity [Fe(CN)6] 4 /3 -based AORFBs.”
Redox flow batteries: Status and perspective towards sustainable stationary energy storage (2021, methodology): “Phenazines and alloxazines able to reach high power density values (0.35 W cm − 2 at 0.58 A cm − 2 ) [106] have been systematically employed with hexacyanoferrate.”
A Water-Miscible Quinone Flow Battery with High Volumetric Capacity and Energy Density (2019, background): “Compared to strongly acidic or basic electrolytes, such less-corrosive electrolytes (pH 7−13) are preferable in terms of less expensive electrolyte-contacting materials and structural stability of redox-active species.(6,11,14,35) On the basis of the Pourbaix diagram in Figure 3b, the absence of a v”
Data-Driven Strategies for Accelerated Materials Design (2021, methodology): “20 To identify ideal organic electrolytes, our group performed HTVS of quinones, which are well-known for their single-electron redox pairs.”
Synthesis of hydrophobic carbon nanotubes/reduced graphene oxide composite films by flash light irradiation (2018, background): “Very often, the organic electrolytes [21] in the energy storage devices require a hydrophobic electrode for providing sufficient wetting contact and ion exchange [22] or intercalation/deintercalation [23].”