Amino-Acid-Substituted Perylene Diimide as the Organic Cathode Materials for Lithium-Ion Batteries

One of the most effective cost reduction and green engineering projects is to introduce organic compounds to electrode materials instead of expensive inorganic-based materials. In this work, derivatives of perylene diimide substituted with amino acids (PDI_AAs) showed the characteristics of redox-active organic compounds and were, therefore, used as cathode materials of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Among the as-synthesized PDI_AAs, the L-alanine-substituted PDI (PDI_A) showed the most improved cycling performances of 86 mAhg(−1) over 150 cycles with retention of 95% at 50 mAg(−1). Furthermore, at a high current density of 500 mAg(−1), PDI_A exhibited a long-term cycling performance of 47 mAhg(−1) (retention to 98%) over 5000 cycles. In addition, ex situ attenuated total reflection Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR FT-IR) analysis of electrodes at various charging states showed the mechanism of the charge-discharge process of PDI_A.