Development of novel organophosphorus electron acceptor molecules for application as organic materials based batteries

• Applicant: Dr. Markus Börgardts
• Subject Area: Organic Molecular Chemistry - Synthesis and Characterisation ; Synthesis and Properties of Functional Materials
• Term: from 2016 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 328412074

Climate change mitigation is one of the major challenges of the 21st century and in the context of the last United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, promotion of renewable energy sources is mandatory. This includes the development of efficient energy storage devices, but in contrast to most of the fast evolving areas of electronic devices, process on battery techniques is quite slow. Especially the field of secondary (rechargeable) batteries lacks improvement resulting in a bottleneck of electronic devices relying on the battery performance. Thus, improvements in the field of rechargeable batteries are needed to yield alternatives for conventional, metal-based energy storage materials. As conventional batteries consist of a cathode, anode and conducting electrolyte, which are all based on metal containing materials, substitution by cost-efficient and regenerative organic materials would be beneficial. With the cathode material contributing 40% to the overall production cost of conventional Li-Ion batteries nowadays, substitution of the cathode material in particular would give rise to improved batteries. Furthermore, the development of pure organic batteries, in which all three components are made of organic materials, could lead to efficient alternatives to today`s stationary metal-based accumulators. Therefore, this research project focuses on the synthesis of organic cathode materials and their application in pure organic as well as in organic-inorganic hybrid batteries. These active cathode materials will be based on phosphorus as integral part of the molecule since they offer advantageous properties compared with their literature known nitrogen containing analogues but have found little scientific attention. Promising structures will additionally be fine-tuned to yield molecules with substituents for enhanced self-assembling properties and improved efficiency. These molecules will be subsequently analysed in battery test cells concerning their performance in actual devices.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: Canada
• Host: Professor Dr. Thomas Baumgartner