Driven by the continuous search for improving performances, understanding the phenomena at the electrode/electrolyte interfaces has become an overriding factor for the success of sustainable and efficient battery technologies for mobile and stationary applications. Toward this goal, rapid advances have been made regarding simulations/modeling techniques and characterization approaches, including high‐throughput electrochemical measurements coupled with spectroscopies. Focusing on Li‐ion batteries, current developments are analyzed in the field as well as future challenges in order to gain a full description of interfacial processes across multiple length/timescales; from charge transfer to migration/diffusion properties and interphases formation, up to and including their stability over the entire battery lifetime. For such complex and interrelated phenomena, developing a unified workflow intimately combining the ensemble of these techniques will be critical to unlocking their full investigative potential. For this paradigm shift in battery design to become reality, it necessitates the implementation of research standards and protocols, underlining the importance of a concerted approach across the community. With this in mind, major collaborative initiatives gathering complementary strengths and skills will be fundamental if societal and environmental imperatives in this domain are to be met.

Aqueous redox flow batteries using electroactive organic materials are currently attracting significant attention. However, the influence of supporting electrolytes on the aqueous solubility, electrochemical reversibility and chemical stability of the organic components has rarely been investigated. Here, a new electrolyte design strategy towards enhanced solubility and chemical stability of active materials is proposed by using interaction-mediating species. 3 molality aqueous imidazolium chlorides, with high ionic conductivity and water-like flowability, enable a record aqueous solubility of 4.3 M for a commercially available nitroxyl radical and reversible 2ereaction of unmodified methyl viologen at moderate concentrations. With 0.6 M electrolyte, flow cell shows remarkable chemical stability of the nitroxyl radical, excellent cycling stability over 250 cycles at 80 mA cm -2 , and a peak power density of 121.6 mW cm -2 at 175 mA cm -2 . Furthermore, nitroxyl radical catholyte with a concentration of 3 M is tested in a flow cell. It maintains an impressive steady energy efficiency of 65% at 30 mA cm -2 . This work paves a new way for the development of high performance aqueous electrolytes based on organic materials.

Open access to research data is increasingly important for accelerating research. Grant authorities therefore request detailed plans for how data is managed in the projects they finance. We have recently developed such a plan for the EUÀ H2020 BIG-MAP project-a cross-disciplinary project targeting disruptive battery-material discoveries. Essential for reaching the goal is extensive sharing of research data across scales, disciplines and stakeholders, not limited to BIG-MAP and the European BATTERY 2030 + initiative but within the entire battery community. The key challenges faced in developing the data management plan for such a large and complex project were to generate an overview of the enormous amount of data that will be produced, to build an understanding of the data flow within the project and to agree on a roadmap for making all data FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable). This paper describes the process we followed and how we structured the plan.

Lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) are a widely used battery technology. During the initial LIB cycle, a passivation layer, called the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI), forms on the anode surface, which plays a crucial role in the performance and long‐term cyclability of LIBs. The overall mesoscale mechanisms of SEI formation and its composition remain elusive both in experimental and computational approaches. Here a multiscale approach to comprehensively characterize the growth and composition of the SEI based on a chemistry‐specific reaction network is presented. Generating an ensemble of over 50 000 simulations representing different reaction conditions, it is found that the organic SEI forms and grows in a solution‐mediated pathway by aggregation of SEI precursors far away from the surface via a nucleation process. The subsequent rapid growth of these nuclei leads to the formation of a porous layer that eventually covers the surface. This finding offers a solution to the paradoxical situation that SEI constituents can form only near the surface, where electrons are available, but does not stop growing when this narrow region is covered. The study is able to identify the key reaction parameters that determine SEI thickness, which pave the way to optimize battery performance and lifetime.

We demonstrate the importance of rational structural design of pyrene-functionalized radical (i.e. 2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-1-piperidinyloxy, TEMPO) copolymers for enhanced electrochemical performance by providing insightful guides for designing high-performance polymer-based electrodes for energy...