Trisulfide-Bond Acenes for Organic Batteries

  • Peng Hu
  • , Xuexia He
  • , Man Fai Ng
  • , Jun Ye
  • , Chenyang Zhao
  • , Shancheng Wang
  • , Kejie Tan
  • , Apoorva Chaturvedi
  • , Hui Jiang*
  • , Christian Kloc
  • , Wenping Hu*
  • , Yi Long*
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

35 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The molecular design of organic battery electrodes is a big challenge. Here, we synthesize two metal-free organosulfur acenes and shed insight into battery properties using first-principles calculations. A new zone-melting chemical-vapor-transport (ZM-CVT) apparatus was fabricated to provide a simple, solvent-free, and continuous synthetic protocol, and produce single crystals of tetrathiotetracene (TTT) and hexathiapentacene (HTP) at a large scale. Single crystals of HTP showed better Li-ion battery performance and higher cycling stability than those of TTT. A two-step, three-electron lithiation mechanism instead of the commonly depicted two-electron mechanism is proposed for the HTP Li-ion battery. The superior performance of HTP is linked to unique trisulfide bonding scenarios, which are also responsible for the formation of empty channels along the stacking direction. In-depth theoretical analysis suggests that organosulfur acenes are potential prototypes for organic battery materials with tunable properties, and that the tuning of sulfur bonds is critical in designing these new materials.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)13513-13521
Number of pages9
JournalAngewandte Chemie - International Edition
Volume58
Issue number38
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 16 Sept 2019

User-Defined Keywords

  • density functional theory
  • non-covalent interactions
  • organic batteries
  • organic semiconductors
  • organosulfur acenes
  • symmetry-adapted perturbation theory (SAPT)

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