Pentacenetetrone Co-polymers as Sustainable Redox-active Electrodes Tailored Towards Deep Eutectic Solvent Electrolytes in Polymer Batteries

聚合物电池有潜力填补低价格和可打印储能设备的差距。这些电池可以为印刷芯片上的低压组件供电，例如有源RFID标签。对于许多应用，印刷电子产品需要是可生物降解的，理想情况下是可堆肥的。然而，富电子分子的生物降解通常通过氧化来实现，该过程对于这些设备中的能量存储也是必不可少的。此外，电解质通常含有对环境有害的盐和溶剂。在这里，我们探索了用于电池的完全生物降解的聚合物电极与作为电解质的低共熔溶剂（DES）的组合。我们将重点放在并五苯四酮作为高电荷密度氧化还原活性聚合物的单体，并对DES与氧化还原电位窗口非常适合并五苯四酮。可生物降解的共聚单体将允许聚合物的片段化，使得并五苯四酮单元能够被细菌分解。 因此，我们将获得稳定和高性能的聚合物电池，这是可生物降解的。我们的新型氧化还原材料与DES相结合，具有与当前最先进的电化学储能材料竞争性能的潜力。

Polymer batteries have the potential to fill the gap of low-price and printable energy storage devices. These batteries could power low voltage components on printed chips, such as active RFID tags. For many applications, printed electronics are required to be biodegradable and ideally compostable. However, biodegradation of electron-rich molecules is often achieved via oxidation, the process which is also essential for energy storage in these devices. Moreover, the electrolyte often contains environmentally harmful salts and solvents. Here, we explore fully-biodegradable polymer electrodes for batteries in combination with deep eutectic solvents (DES) as electrolytes. We will focus on pentacenetetrone as a monomer for high charge density redox-active polymers, and on DES with a redox potential window well-suited for pentacenetetrone. Biodegradable co-monomers will allow fragmentation of the polymer enabling bacterial decomposition of the pentacenetetrone units. As a result, we will obtain a stable and high-performance polymer battery, which is biodegradable. Our new redox materials in combination with DES bear the potential to compete in performance with current state-of-the-art materials for electrochemical energy storage.