Industries generate thousands of tons of TPPO annually during processes like organic synthesis, including vitamin production. Typically deemed useless, it requires careful disposal.
Northwestern researchers have now developed a “one-pot” reaction enabling chemists to convert TPPO into a valuable material with significant energy storage potential.
“Not only can an organic molecule be used, but it can also achieve high-energy density — getting closer to its metal-based competitors — along with high stability. These two parameters are traditionally challenging to optimize together, so being able to show this for a molecule that is waste-derived is particularly exciting,” said Emily Mahoney, a Ph.D. candidate in the Malapit lab and the paper’s first author, in a statement.