An engineered electrode of phenazine with suitable binder and carbon to exhibit excellent energy and power density in an aqueous organic zinc ion battery

Aqueous Zinc Ion Batteries (AZIBs) can be an alternative to lithium-ion batteries due to their high volumetric capacity (5851 mAh cm−3 of zinc), inherent safety, and low price. Due to their structural diversity and tunability, redox-active organic compounds are potential candidates as cathode materials for AZIBs. Nonetheless, it is still a work under progress to identify an optimized organic cathode having redox active molecules with compatible conductive carbon and binders to achieve a high-performance battery. Herein, we report Phenazine (PNZ) as cathode material and demonstrated its ability to operate at higher current density of 1A g−1 for 1500 cycles with 100 % coulombic efficiency and ∼73 % capacity retention. Benefiting from the excellent rapport between PNZ, conductive carbon, and hydrophilic Nafion binder, the Zn//PNZ coin cell demonstrated an excellent specific capacity of ∼225 mAh g−1 at 1 A g−1PNZ. Besides, this fabricated device exhibited an outstanding energy density of ∼180 Wh kg−1 at 1 A g−1 and a power density of 6.6 kW kg−1 at 5 A g−1. This work conveys a strategy to understand excellent compatibility among the conductive additive and binder in the performance of AZIBs using simple organics.