Researchers at the University of New South Wales have made progress in developing their proton battery, which they believe will be cheaper than lithium-ion and safer for the environment.

The research, led by PhD candidate Sicheng Wu and Professor Chuan Zhao from the School of Chemistry, focuses on developing materials capable of effectively storing protons in an inexpensive way and is published in Angewandte Chemie.

Their material could be a significant step towards the mass production of proton batteries.

“The current electrode materials used for proton batteries, some of which are made from organic materials, and others from metals, are heavy and still very high cost,” explains Wu. 

However, the team has found a solution, developing a compound called tetraamino-benzaquinone (TABQ).

They modified a version of an existing compound Tetrachloro-benzoquinone (TCBQ) by replacing the chlorine atoms with amino groups, which are single atoms of nitrogen bonded to two hydrogen atoms which helped improve the electrochemical properties of the material.

“If you just look at the TABQ material that we have designed, it’s not necessarily cheap to produce at the moment,” says Zhao. “But because it’s made of abundant light elements, it will be easy and affordable to eventually scale up.”

Batteries work by storing chemical energy and converting it into electrical energy. The most common form of battery in household products, lithium-ion batteries, can be found in everything from phones, laptops to electric cars.

“Lithium is a finite resource that is not evenly distributed on earth, so some countries may not have access to low-cost lithium sources. Lithium batteries also have very big challenges regarding fast-charging applications, safety, and they have low efficiency in cold temperatures,” says Wu.

Proton batteries are gaining attention as a potential alternative to lithium-ion batteries.

Proton batteries, as the name suggests, use protons rather than lithium ions to power devices. Protons are atoms of hydrogen that have lost their electron.

Scientists have been challenged by trying to find an effective material to store and transport these protons. Many of the current solutions are inefficient in charging, expensive and have limited performance.

Given protons tiny size, they can move more quickly and efficiently than alternatives. This is why proton-based batteries can potentially be cheaper, more sustainable and faster to charge.

“We have designed a very good anode material, and future work will move to the cathode side. We will continue designing new organic materials that have higher potential range to increase the battery output voltage,” says Wu.