In summary, polymers are omnipresent in modern day commercial batteries and in battery research activities. One important component of batteries is the separator. While porous separators have been commercially available for a long time, gel–polymer electrolytes and solid polymer electrolytes are emerging areas for lithium-ion battery technology.
While established batteries usually rely on inorganic compounds and metals as charge-storing materials, a new class of redox-active polymers, with organic moieties that are able to reversibly store electrons, has emerged during the last years. The utilization of organic polymers offers several advantages.
Overall, new battery chemistries offer promising paths towards high-performance energy storage (Fig. 2d) for improved sustainability, and there is a significant opportunity for innovation in polymer science and engineering to help solve longstanding problems and enable the development of these devices.
Polymers play a crucial role in improving the performance of the ubiquitous lithium ion battery. But they will be even more important for the development of sustainable and versatile post-lithium battery technologies, in particular solid-state batteries.
In this way, battery manufacturers can use safer and better-performing new raw materials to produce batteries. It will enable battery manufacturers to use safer and better-performing new raw materials to make batteries. Thus, it will enhance the performance of NEVs and ultimately benefit consumers.
As the demand for high-energy density devices increases, innovative new materials that build on the fundamental understanding of physical phenomena and structure–property relationships will be required to enable high-capacity next-generation battery chemistries.