(180d) Polyaniline/Vanadium Pentoxide Layer-by-Layer Battery Electrodes

As access to rare earths and other valuable transition metals narrows, the importance of identifying their potential replacements becomes a grand challenge. Cobalt is recognized as a material critical to the manufacture of Li-ion battery cathodes, but the supply of cobalt is limited. One potential alternative cathode material is polyaniline, which can be synthesized from domestic feedstock. Polyaniline is potentially an important material for organic energy storage applications because of polyaniline’s high conductivity, specific energy, and cyclability. However, polyaniline’s low specific power presents a major challenge to overcome. Here, we will present polyaniline/V₂O₅ cathodes made using layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly technique that may potentially address these challenges by carefully controlling (i) molecular structure via chemical synthesis, (ii) electrode topography, and (iii) mixing via LbL assembly. We will discuss why and how different types of polyaniline (commercial vs. custom-made) and different processing techniques (dip LbL vs. spray LbL) influence energy storage in the proposed hybrid battery electrodes. We explore these cathodes using non-aqueous electrochemistry, spectroscopy, and other materials characterization techniques. Results suggest that the electrochemical behavior is dominated by polyaniline and electrode thickness.