Development of A New Cell Design for Battery Research and an Investigation of Electrode Materials and Electrolyte Systems For Mg Batteries
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Date
2014-12-10Author
Periyapperuma Achchige, Mary Kalani Erangi
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Magnesium batteries are considered as an inexpensive and high energy density alternative to Li-ion batteries. One of these challenges in Mg batteries is the lack of rigid, inexpensive cell hardware to test new electrode materials and electrolyte systems. Therefore, a new electrochemical test cell design based on low cost, readily available Conflat vacuum fittings that can easily be adapted to either 2 or 3- electrode cell set-ups capable of operating at temperatures up to 200°C has been introduced. As an alternative to Mg metal anode, sputtered Pb films were found to reversibly alloy electrochemically with Mg in Grignard based electrolytes. The voltage curve shows a single plateau at about 125 mV vs. Mg, corresponding to the formation of Mg2Pb, as confirmed by ex-situ X-ray diffraction. Pb was found to be the highest energy density Mg alloy yet reported, with the lowest voltage and highest volumetric capacity of any Mg alloy.