Ecobat is pleased to share that collaborative research involving our team has been featured as the Back Cover of Energy & Environmental Science (Vol. 18, Issue 20), highlighting a significant advance in the development of next-generation battery materials.
The study presents a new class of amorphous coordination polymers capable of reversibly storing a wide range of divalent metal ions, including Mg²⁺, Ca²⁺, Sr²⁺, Ba²⁺, and Zn²⁺. These materials act as universal hosts for divalent cations and demonstrate several key performance advantages:
- high working voltages,
- fast and stable cycling with low hysteresis, and
- storage without solvent or anion co-intercalation.
For calcium- and magnesium-based systems, the materials achieved record working potentials exceeding 3.2 V vs. Ca²⁺/Ca and 2.8 V vs. Mg²⁺/Mg, representing some of the highest values reported to date for these chemistries. The performance is enabled by the polymers’ amorphous structure and delocalized anionic charge, which create flexible coordination environments that promote rapid cation diffusion and weak binding.
Another breakthrough demonstrated in the work is that these coordination polymers can be synthesized directly in their reduced, cation-containing phase. This approach opens the door to anode-free magnesium and calcium batteries, a concept that has long been considered extremely challenging due to the difficulty of reversibly plating and stripping these metals.
Importantly, the materials are composed of abundant and sustainable elements, and the study reports the first-ever reversible storage of Sr²⁺ and Ba²⁺ ions, expanding the scope of divalent-metal battery chemistry.
By establishing key design principles for universal divalent cation hosts, this research contributes to the broader effort to develop safer, lower-cost, and more sustainable energy storage technologies. The findings also raise new questions for the field, including the development of even higher-performance cathodes and electrolytes capable of operating at elevated voltages.
Ecobat is proud to contribute to advancing the science behind next-generation battery systems and to see this work recognized in one of the leading journals in energy research.
Reference: Guo, X., Markowski, R., Black, A., Apostol, P., Rambabu, D., Lužanin, O., … & Vlad, A. (2025). Amorphous coordination polymers for versatile Mg 2 , Ca 2 , Sr 2 , Ba 2 , and Zn 2 cation storage. Energy & environmental science, 18(20), 9114-9124.
To read the full article, visit the website of RSC.