Novel Electrolyte Chemistries for Mg-Ni Rechargeable Batteries

Commercial hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) and battery electric vehicles (BEV) serve as means to reduce the nation's dependence on oil. Current electric vehicles use relatively heavy nickel metal hydride (Ni-MH) rechargeable batteries. Li-ion rechargeable batteries have been developed extensively as the replacement; however, the high cost and safety concerns are still issues to be resolved before large-scale production. In this study, we propose a new highly conductive solid polymer electrolyte for Mg-Ni high electrochemical capacity batteries. The traditional corrosive alkaline aqueous electrolyte (KOH) is replaced with a dry polymer with conductivity on the order of 10^-2 S/cm, as measured by impedance spectroscopy. Several potential novel polymer and polymer composite candidates are presented with the best-performing electrolyte results for full cell testing and cycling.