What if the next battery you buy was made from the same kinds of ingredients found in your body? That’s the idea behind a breakthrough battery material made from natural, biodegradable components. It’s so natural, it could even be consumed as food.
A team of researchers at Texas A&M University , including Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Dr. Karen Wooley and Professor of Chemical Engineering Dr. Jodie Lutkenhaus, has developed a biodegradable battery using natural polymers. Its findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Wooley’s research group in the College of Arts and Sciences has spent the past 15 years shifting toward natural products for the construction of sustainable and degradable plastics materials. Lutkenhaus, Associate Dean for Research in the College of Engineering, has been using organic materials to design a better battery. She suggested collaboration to combine Wooley’s naturally sourced polymers with her battery expertise.
“We’ve long been interested in safer, more flexible battery materials,” said Lutkenhaus. “When Dr. Wooley’s lab began developing these naturally sourced polymers, it opened the door to something entirely new — a battery that could perform well and also disappear safely when it’s no longer needed.”
The new material is made from two key ingredients found in nature: riboflavin, also known as vitamin B2, and L-glutamic acid, an amino acid that helps build proteins in the body.
“Those components were identified by a talented recent Ph.D. graduate, Dr. Shih-Guo Li, who began his dissertation research five years ago with the intention of enhancing the content of bio-renewable building blocks for organic polymer battery construction,” Wooley said. “He then developed synthetic methods to connect the molecular building blocks into chain-like structures called polypeptides.”
What makes this material special is that it’s redox-active, which means it can gain and lose electrons. This is how batteries store and release energy. In this case, the riboflavin handles the energy, while the polypeptide provides structure and helps the material break down naturally.
Unlike conventional Li-ion batteries, which rely on metals and petrochemicals, this new material is derived entirely from renewable biological sources. It’s designed to degrade safely when exposed to water or enzymes, making it a promising solution for reducing battery waste, especially in cases where batteries aren’t properly recycled.
“Although there are significant efforts to recycle batteries, in cases where batteries are not actively collected and processed for recycling, they should be capable of undergoing breakdown naturally and with release of non-toxic degradation products,” Wooley said.
Here is an exclusive Tech Briefs interview, edited for length and clarity, with Wooley, Li, and Lutkenhaus.
Tech Briefs: What was the biggest technical challenge you faced while developing this biodegradable battery?
Wooley, Li, and Lutkenhaus: The greatest challenge has been developing a sustainably sourced and degradable/recyclable battery with high natural content in a cost-efficient manner. The synthetic chemistry requires air-free synthetic methods and operates over several steps using relatively expensive starting materials, each of which contribute to increased cost and complexity. In addition, finding the right balance between (bio)degradability and electrochemical stability remains a trade-off that needs further investigation to ensure both performance and sustainability. However, beyond the redox-active polypeptide that we have been innovating, there are several other standard components that are used in the fabrication of a functioning battery, which enhance the translational potential and practicality.
Tech Briefs: Can you explain in simple terms how it works please?
W, L, and L: This peptide-based material features a hydrolytically-degradable backbone with pendant riboflavin side chains that undergo redox reactions to store and release electrical energy. Riboflavin, a naturally occurring vitamin, exhibits a relatively low redox potential, making these pendant groups particularly well-suited for anode functionality in battery systems. Upon reaching the end of its lifetime, the labile amide bonds of the backbone and ester linkages tethering the side chains undergo hydrolytic cleavage (upon reaction with water, facilitated by catalysis), leading to degradation into natural product derivatives that have been shown to be non-cytotoxic.
Tech Briefs: Do you have any set plans for further research/work/etc.?
W, L, and L: We are exploring other natural products as building blocks to make the chemistry more accessible and cost-effective, thereby enabling broader practical applications. To advance this direction, two graduate students, Kai-Hua Mick Kuo and Leyla P. Gillett, are working under Shih-Guo Li’s mentorship to develop alternative systems inspired by DNA, hemoglobin, and mussels. In parallel, a key priority is to deepen the understanding of fundamental charge transport in these bio-derived polymer systems to further enhance battery performance.
Tech Briefs: Do you have any advice for researchers aiming to bring their ideas to fruition?
W, L, and L: It is important to plan carefully while remaining adaptable. For example, when we first set out to build these polypeptide-based systems, we considered several different synthetic strategies. Because the design was novel, we encountered unexpected synthetic challenges along the way. By staying flexible, having alternative approaches in mind, and maintaining close communication with experts across different disciplines, we were able to turn the initial idea into tangible materials.
