Aqueous rechargeable batteries provide the safety, robustness, affordability, and environmental friendliness necessary for grid storage and electric vehicle operations, but their adoption is plagued by poor cycle life due to the structural and chemical instability of the anode materials. Here we report quinones as stable anode materials by exploiting their structurally stable ion-coordination charge storage mechanism and chemical inertness towards aqueous electrolytes. Upon rational selection/design of quinone structures, we demonstrate three systems that coupled with industrially established cathodes and electrolytes exhibit long cycle life (up to 3,000 cycles/3,500 h), fast kinetics (≥20C), high anode specific capacity (up to 200–395 mAh g−1), and several examples of state-of-the-art specific energy/energy density (up to 76–92 Wh kg−1/ 161–208 Wh l−1) for several operational pH values (−1 to 15), charge carrier species (H+, Li+, Na+, K+, Mg2+), temperature (−35 to 25 °C), and atmosphere (with/without O2), making them a universal anode approach for any aqueous battery technology.

Nature Materials (2017) doi:10.1038/nmat4919
Received 11 November 2016 Accepted 18 April 2017 Published online 19 June 2017

http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat4919.html