Nanostructured Conjugated Polymers: Toward High-Performance Organic Electrodes for Rechargeable Batteries

Nanostructured conjugated polymers are a type of electrochemically active organic material with a high electronic conductivity, good electrochemical stability, and superior flexibility. Owing to these advantages, increasing research interest has been recently focused on the utilization of nanostructured conjugated polymers as green and renewable resources for potential high-performance energy storage and conversion devices. This Review discusses the current situation and the state-of-the-art developments on nanostructured conjugated polymers including their one- and two-dimensional (1D and 2D) structures as well as their three-dimensional (3D) composite forms as electrode materials for rechargeable batteries. In particular, the fundamentals, challenges, and possible directions to improve the performance of the current systems are included in this Review. With sufficient depth and advanced technologies devoted to exploration of the electrochemistry and mechanism, nanostructured conjugated polymer-based electrodes will be of great scientific interest for future practical applications.