Bat­tery made from nat­ur­al mater­i­als could replace con­ven­tion­al lith­i­um-ion batteries

What if the next bat­tery you buy was made from the same kinds of ingredi­ents found in your body? That’s the idea behind a break­through bat­tery mater­i­al made from nat­ur­al, bio­de­grad­able com­pon­ents. It’s so nat­ur­al, it could even be con­sumed as food.

A team of research­ers at Texas A&M Uni­ver­sity, includ­ing Dis­tin­guished Pro­fess­or of Chem­istry Dr. Kar­en Wooley and Pro­fess­or of Chem­ic­al Engin­eer­ing Dr. Jod­ie Lutken­haus, has developed a bio­de­grad­able bat­tery using nat­ur­al poly­mers. Its find­ings were pub­lished in the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Academy of Sciences.

Wooley’s research group in the Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences has spent the past 15 years shift­ing toward nat­ur­al products for the con­struc­tion of sus­tain­able and degrad­able plastics mater­i­als. Lutken­haus, asso­ci­ate dean for research in the Col­lege of Engin­eer­ing, has been using organ­ic mater­i­als to design a bet­ter bat­tery. She sug­ges­ted col­lab­or­a­tion to com­bine Wooley’s nat­ur­ally sourced poly­mers with her bat­tery expertise.

“We’ve long been inter­ested in safer, more flex­ible bat­tery mater­i­als,” said Lutken­haus. ​“When Dr. Wooley’s lab began devel­op­ing these nat­ur­ally sourced poly­mers, it opened the door to some­thing entirely new — a bat­tery that could per­form well and also dis­ap­pear safely when it’s no longer needed.”

A bat­tery made from vit­am­in B2 and amino acids

The new mater­i­al is made from two key ingredi­ents found in nature: ribo­flav­in, also known as vit­am­in B2, and L‑glutamic acid, an amino acid that helps build pro­teins in the body.

“Those com­pon­ents were iden­ti­fied by a tal­en­ted recent Ph.D. gradu­ate, Dr. Shih-Guo Li, who began his dis­ser­ta­tion research five years ago with the inten­tion of enhan­cing the con­tent of bio-renew­able build­ing blocks for organ­ic poly­mer bat­tery con­struc­tion,” Wooley said. ​“He then developed syn­thet­ic meth­ods to con­nect the molecu­lar build­ing blocks into chain-like struc­tures called polypeptides.”

What makes this mater­i­al spe­cial is that it’s redox-act­ive, which means it can gain and lose elec­trons. This is how bat­ter­ies store and release energy. In this case, the ribo­flav­in handles the energy, while the poly­peptide provides struc­ture and helps the mater­i­al break down naturally.

Unlike con­ven­tion­al lith­i­um-ion bat­ter­ies, which rely on metals and pet­ro­chem­ic­als, this new mater­i­al is derived entirely from renew­able bio­lo­gic­al sources. It’s designed to degrade safely when exposed to water or enzymes, mak­ing it a prom­ising solu­tion for redu­cing bat­tery waste, espe­cially in cases where bat­ter­ies aren’t prop­erly recycled.

“Although there are sig­ni­fic­ant efforts to recycle bat­ter­ies, in cases where bat­ter­ies are not act­ively col­lec­ted and pro­cessed for recyc­ling, they should be cap­able of under­go­ing break­down nat­ur­ally and with release of non-tox­ic degrad­a­tion products,” Wooley said.

Safer for the envir­on­ment and liv­ing cells

In lab tests, the mater­i­al showed its suit­ab­il­ity as an anode, the part of a bat­tery that stores elec­trons. Import­antly, the mater­i­al was also shown to be non-tox­ic to fibro­blast cells, a type of cell found in con­nect­ive tissue.

“At this point, we’ve merely con­firmed that our mater­i­als are cyto­com­pat­ible, mean­ing they are non-harm­ful to cells,” said Wooley. ​“This may mat­ter if the mater­i­als were to be used in implant­able or wear­able devices.”

Lutken­haus said the per­form­ance res­ults were espe­cially prom­ising giv­en the material’s nat­ur­al origins.

“We were excited to see that the elec­tro­chem­ic­al beha­vi­or was on par with syn­thet­ic non-sus­tain­able poly­mer­ic mater­i­als,” she said. ​“It shows that you don’t have to sac­ri­fice per­form­ance to gain sustainability.”

Toward a cir­cu­lar future for bat­tery design

The research­ers say this kind of design — start­ing with the end in mind — is key to build­ing a more sus­tain­able future. Instead of cre­at­ing mater­i­als that last forever and become waste, they’re design­ing them to be part of a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy, where mater­i­als are reused, recycled or safely returned to nature.

“I like to con­sider every syn­thet­ic mater­i­al that my labor­at­ory pro­duces as being a point along its jour­ney toward func­tion and pur­pose,” Wooley said, ​“with an abil­ity to per­form phys­ic­al and chem­ic­al trans­form­a­tions that allow reuse of the molecu­lar com­pon­ents in sev­er­al oth­er directions.

“Most extreme in this case, the bat­ter­ies could become edible to provide a dif­fer­ent kind of ​‘energy’ supply.”

For now, the team is focused on improv­ing the material’s per­form­ance and find­ing ways to make it more afford­able. Cur­rently, the chem­ic­al pro­cess used to make the mater­i­al is too expens­ive for com­mer­cial use.

“We need to improve per­form­ance and then devel­op pro­cesses that would be prof­it­able,” Wooley said. ​“That could require 5 – 10 years.”

The excite­ment of inter­dis­cip­lin­ary collaboration

One of the most excit­ing parts of the pro­ject, the research­ers say, was the col­lab­or­a­tion across Texas A&M colleges.

“As a chem­ist, my most excit­ing moment was when Pro­fess­or Lutken­haus’ labor­at­ory demon­strated that our mater­i­als could be fab­ric­ated into work­ing bat­tery sys­tems,” Wooley said. ​“It was a con­firm­a­tion that the strategy has prom­ise to move forward.”

Lutken­haus added, ​“See­ing the mater­i­als come togeth­er in a func­tion­ing bat­tery was a major mile­stone. It val­id­ated the concept and gave us a clear dir­ec­tion for future development.”

This research is sup­por­ted by the Nation­al Sci­ence Found­a­tion and the Welch Foundation.