Phosphorus and sulfur team up to create efficient redox flow batteries

A new class of molecules based on just main group elements can store and release energy efficiently in flow batteries, with minimal degradation. Although the work is purely a proof-of-concept, researchers in the field are excited by the possibilities for energy storage. ‘It’s great… extreme potentials and high stability,’ says Gloria De La Garza, a doctoral candidate working on redox flow batteries at the University of Michigan, US, who wasn’t involved in the study.

Redox flow batteries are an attractive way to store energy from intermittent sources, such as solar and wind . In a flow battery, electrochemical energy is stored on soluble molecules, housed in spatially separated storage tanks. ‘As the name suggests, flow batteries are dynamic; electrochemical energy is released from a redox event between the [different] species that is controlled in flow,’ explains lead author Máté Bezdek, from ETH Zürich in Switzerland. Flow presents a unique opportunity ‘to independently tune the amount of energy stored and the rate [of] release’, adds Bezdek.