A new conducting copolymer bearing electro-active nitroxide groups as organic electrode materials for batteries and pseudosupercapacitors.

In order to reduce the amount of conducting additives generally required for polynitroxide based electrodes, we combined a stable radical (TEMPO) with a conductive copolymer backbone constituted by 2,7-bisthiophene carbazole (2,7-BTC), which is characterized by its high intrinsic electronic conductivity. This work deals with the synthesis of this new polymer functionalized by a redox nitroxide. Its fine structural characterization using EPR techniques established that: 1. the nitroxide radicals are properly attached to the radical chain (cw-EPR), 2. the polymer chain has very rigid conformations leading to a set of well-defined distances between first neighbouring pairs of nitroxides (pulsed EPR. The redox group combined with electroactive polymer showed not only a very high electrochemical reversibility but also a perfect match of redox potentials between the de-/doping reaction of bisthiophene carbazole backbone and the redox activity of nitroxide radical. This new organic electrode shows stable capacity (about 60 mAh.g -1 ) and enables to drastically reduce the ratio of carbon additives due to conducting polymer skeleton.