Recently, Associate Professor Lu Zhouguang’s research group of SUSTech Materials Science and Engineering Department got published online in Nature Communications (Impact Factor 11.33), a scientific journal run by the Nature Publishing Group. The academic paper, “Highly Durable Organic Electrode for Sodium-Ion Batteries via a Stabilized α-C Radical Intermediate,” proposed the new concept of enhancing the stability of organic polymer-based electrode materials through radicals.
The paper’s co-first authors are laboratorians Wu Shaofei and Wang Wenxi, its corresponding author is Associate Professor Lu Zhouguang, and its main participants include the PhD candidate Cao Lujie and research assistants Li Minchan, Lu Fucong, Yang Mingyang, Wang Zhenyu and Sun Zhifang. It is worth mentioning that Shi Yang, Nan Bo, and Yu Sicen, now junior undergraduate students of Materials Science and Engineering Department, joined the research group since their second semester in SUSTech and made certain contributions to the scientific research project by their active involvement in the experiments for the paper.
The organic sodium-ion battery electrode material, given its transparency, flexibility, availability and functionalizability, is becoming a potential substitute of the current commercial lithium-ion battery electrode material. And it can be applied to wearable electronic devices, large-scale energy storage and other fields. At present, the organic electrodes of commonly researched aromatic quinones, polyimides, Schiff bases, and carboxylate compounds are not only of low capacity but also have short cycle lives and other critical problems. Therefore, the development of high-capacity and high-stability organic sodium-ion battery electrode material is of great research value and promises broad application prospects. After a reduction reaction, C=O, C=N, C-S-S-C, and other unsaturated groups in organic electrodes form ·C-O, ·C-N, C-S· radical intermediates. The radical intermediates, with high coupling activity, easily generate non-oxidative and reducible dimers, which is the root cause of organic electrode capacity attenuation. Thus, the research group raised the reaction barrier to inhibit the radicals’ secondary coupling reaction activity and develop high-stability organic electrode materials. In the paper, the authors, through energy-band theoretical calculations, electron paramagnetic resonance, synchrotron radiation X-ray absorption near-edge structure and electrochemical charge and discharge tests, proved the formation, transfer, stability, and electrochemical behavior mechanism of α-C radicals. It proposed a general strategy for the design of long cycling stability organic electrode materials, which is of great theoretical significance and promises broad industrial application prospects.
Since he joined the SUSTech in 2012, Associate Professor Lu Zhouguang has got 38 SCI papers published on behalf of our university. Among them, 28 papers were published with Lu Zhouguang as the corresponding author and 13 papers were published with the SUSTech as the first unit, including one in Nature Communications, one in Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed., two in Journal of Power Sources (a top journal in the field of energy materials and materials chemistry), two in Chemical Communications, and two in Journal of Materials Chemistry A. These papers have got more than 390 cites in total in the past four years. He has been granted two national invention patents and has applied for six national invention patents.
The laboratory has successively received support from National Natural Science Foundation of China, Shenzhen Peacock Plan, Shenzhen Research Foundation for Basic Research, SUSTech Scientific Research Foundation and President Foundation. The synchrotron radiation tests were conducted at Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility, where Dr. Chen Zhenhua, Prof. Wen Wen, and Prof. Zhang Lijuan provided the research group with great assistance and support.
