Batteries and supercapacitors play a crucial role in our daily life, extending their applications from portable electronic devices, grid-scale energy storage to transportation. Nowadays, lithium-ion technology is the chosen one for mobile phones and electric vehicles, due to its high specific energy and power density. However, the relatively low abundance of lithium and toxicity of other inorganic materials such as cobalt, and difficult recycling of Li-ion batteries have led to an intense search for alternative materials and battery technologies. Redox polymers are nowadays promising alternatives to currently used inorganic materials for several emerging battery technologies such as lithium-organic, all-polymer or redox-flow batteries. iPES-3DBat moved the polymers developed within iPES ERC grant towards the commercialization stage through the creation of an start up company named POLYKEY (www.polykey.eu). The main technical goal of the POC was to develop polymers and batteries via additive manufacturing or 3D printing. The start up POLYKEY will specialize in the production and commercialization of polymers including polymer electrolytes, redox polymers and poly(ionic liquid)s for batteries.
