Organic quinones towards advanced electrochemical energy storage: recent advances and challenges

Redox active organic quinones are a class of potentially low cost, sustainable, and high energy density electroactive materials for energy storage applications due to their large specific capacity, high redox reactivity, and excellent electrochemical reversibility. Moreover, their electrochemical properties can easily be tailored through molecular structure engineering. A variety of quinones and their derivatives have been investigated as promising electroactive materials for versatile applications including Li, Na, K, and Zn ion batteries, supercapacitors (SCs), etc. This review aims to summarize the recent progress and challenges of organic quinones towards advanced electrochemical energy storage applications. The relationships between the molecular structure and polar groups of quinones with the corresponding energy density, voltage plateau, and specific capacity properties are elucidated. Then, the state-of-the-art progress of organic quinones in Li ion batteries, Na ion batteries, K ion batteries, Mg ion batteries, Zn ion batteries, SCs and redox flow batteries is reviewed in detail. The strategies to address the low tap density, small electrical conductivity, and strong dissolution issues of quinones are also summarized, followed by the critical challenges and important future directions for the application of quinone compounds as electroactive materials for advanced electrochemical energy storage devices.