Towards sustainable and versatile energy storage devices: an overview of organic electrode materials

As an alternative to conventional inorganic intercalation electrode materials, organic electrode materials are promising candidates for the next generation of sustainable and versatile energy storage devices. In this paper we provide an overview of organic electrode materials, including their fundamental knowledge, development history and perspective applications. Based on different organics including n-type, p-type and bipolar, we firstly analyzed their working principles, reaction mechanisms, electrochemical performances, advantages and challenges. To understand the development history and trends in organic electrode materials, we elaborate in detail various organics with different structures, including conducting polymers, organodisulfides, thioethers, nitroxyl radical polymers and conjugated carbonyl compounds. The high electrochemical performance, in addition with the unique features of organics such as flexibility, processability and structure diversity, provide them great perspective in various energy storage devices, including rechargeable Li/Na batteries, supercapacitors, thin film batteries, aqueous rechargeable batteries, redox flow batteries and even all-organic batteries. It is expected that organic electrode materials will show their talents in the “post Li-ion battery” era, towards cheap, green, sustainable and versatile energy storage devices.