Organic electrode materials, despite their elemental abundance, environmental friendliness, and design flexibility, often suffer from limited electronic and ionic conductivities, which restrict their practical applications. Here, we present a universal thiourea coupling strategy that improves both electron and ion transport in quinone-based organic electrodes. Taking phenanthrenequinone as a representative example, thiourea incorporation increases the electron density of the quinones and improves the overall electronic conductivity of the electrode material. Meanwhile, thiourea establishes continuous proton-transport pathways, enabling proton-dominated redox reactions via a Grotthuss-type hopping mechanism. As a result, zinc batteries employing the coupled electrode exhibit stable cycling behavior over 6000 cycles at a low conductive carbon content (10 wt%) and maintain reliable operation in pouch-cell configurations under high mass loading conditions of 20 mg cm-2. In addition, the applicability of this molecular coupling strategy is demonstrated across multiple quinone systems, paving that path towards practical organic electrode materials.
Hong et al. (Tue,) studied this question.