| Description | Organic Batteries for a More Sustainable Future Cobalt, nickel, and lithium are essential ingredients in today’s lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), but their continued use presents economic, ethical, and environmental challenges. Society must now begin to consider the implications of a LIB’s full life cycle, including the carbon footprint, the economic and environmental costs, and material access. These challenges motivate the case for degradable or recyclable batteries sourced from earth-abundant materials whose life cycle bears minimal impact on the environment. This presentation considers organic polymer-based batteries, which have the potential to address many of these issues. Redox-active polymers form the positive and negative electrodes, storing charge through a reversible redox mechanism. We demonstrate how these polymer electrodes can be degraded on command or else recycled, offering the promise of a circular platform free of critical elements. About the Speaker Dr. Lutkenhaus is a Professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering and an Associate Dean for Research at Texas A&M University. She is the Deputy Editor of ACS Applied Polymer Materials, a member of the U.S. National Academies Board of Chemical Sciences & Technology, and a member of the U.S. National Committee for IUPAC.
The Clean Energy Institute Interdisciplinary Seminar Series was established to bring distinguished leaders in the field of clean energy to campus to present their research and meet students, postdocs, and faculty from departments across the Colleges of Arts & Sciences, Engineering, and the Environment.
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