Cui Guanglei, a researcher at the Qingdao Energy Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and associate professor Zhou Xinhong of Qingdao University of Science & Technology, developed for the first time a high-performance gel polymer electrolyte for magnesium batteries.

As a low-cost and high safety energy storage technology, magnesium secondary battery is attracting the attention of researchers at home and abroad Among many alkali metal and alkaline earth metal negative electrodes, magnesium metal negative electrode has many competitive advantages, such as not easy to grow dendrite, high volume specific capacity, high reserves, low cost and so on However, the development of magnesium battery has been restricted by the effective deposition of dissolved magnesium electrolyte Although researchers have developed some organic liquid electrolytes with excellent performance over the past decade, the liquid electrolytes can not get rid of the shortcomings of volatile and flammable Compared with the liquid electrolyte, polymer electrolyte has the advantages of higher safety, prevention of internal short circuit, no electrolyte leakage, easy to assemble battery and flexible structure However, there are few reports on the application of polymer electrolyte in magnesium battery Based on the above research background, Cui Guanglei, a researcher at the Qingdao Energy Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and associate professor Zhou Xinhong of Qingdao University of Science & Technology, constructed a gel polymer electrolyte system capable of reversibly depositing dissolved magnesium on the glass fiber skeleton by means of in situ cross-linking reaction of hydrogen borate and tetrahydrofuran terminated hydroxyl groups The gel electrolyte showed high migration number of magnesium ions (0.73) and room temperature ionic conductivity (4.76 x 10-4 S/cm) The Mo 6 S 8 /Mg battery assembled with the gel electrolyte system can work normally in a wide temperature range and exhibits excellent safety performance This in-situ crosslinking method provides a potential strategy for the further development of polymer electrolyte for magnesium battery Relevant achievements were published in advanced materials (DOI: 10.1002 / ADMA 201805930) The first author of the paper is Du aobing, a doctoral student of Qingdao Energy Institute Schematic diagram of in-situ cross-linking reaction of magnesium borohydride with hydroxyl end group of polytetrahydrofuran (source: Advanced Materials) The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars, the national key research and development plan and the Qingdao science and technology project fund.