Colloquium by Engelbert Portenkirchner

   Tuesday, 01.12.26, 16:30
   HS C
   Students, Academic Staff
 

We invite you to our colloquium by Engelbert Portenkirchner, Institute of Physical Chemistry, Leopold-Franzens-University Innsbruck

Title: From Chemistry to Cells: Battery Technology Overview and Redox-Selective Control of PDI for Fast, Durable Aqueous Sodium-Ion Storage

Batteries beyond lithium are central to sustainable electrification, yet material availability, cost, and safety motivate diversification toward sodium-ion systems and aqueous electrolytes. This talk will survey the landscape of battery chemistries—from Li-ion to emerging Na-ion and organic electrode platforms—highlighting trade-offs in abundance, power capability, safety, and sustainability. I will then focus on my recent research in the Battery Technologies group at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, highlighting an organic, aqueous sodium-ion approach that leverages redox-selective control to unlock fast, durable performance.

Specifically, we show that constraining perylene diimide (PTCDI) to a single-electron redox process in aqueous media enables long-term cycling stability and ultrafast charge–discharge. A fully organic electrode architecture with sustainable, water-based processing supports this approach. By restricting operation to the first redox step and stabilizing the radical-anion state via Na+ coordination to carbonyl groups, parasitic reactions are suppressed, yielding high efficiency and substantial capacity retention even at very short charge times. This establishes redox-selective control as a broadly applicable strategy for durable, high-rate organic electrodes in aqueous sodium-ion batteries.

Organizers: K. Erath-Dulitz, H.-C. Nägerl, F. Marleau