Researchers Create Magnesium-Ion Batteries That Don’t Explode

What’s that one thing about Li-ion batteries that threatens many people? These batteries, used in a variety of electronic devices and EVs, can explode because they house liquid electrolyte which helps the charge travel between cathode and anode, making them flammable.

Thankfully, all of that might change in the future, and we may not see iPhones and Galaxies burst into pieces. One answer to safer batteries that could also hold more charge is to use solid-state batteries which is still in their early stages of development. And, these implementations are mostly Li-ion based.

A team of Department Of Energy (DOE) researchers at the Joint Center for Energy Storage has discovered a fast magnesium-ion solid-state conductor. Initially, researchers at DOE’s Berkely Lab were working on a liquid electrolyte-based magnesium battery.

Later, they went for a material called magnesium scandium spinel having magnesium mobility comparable to solid-state electrolytes for Li-ion batteries.

The development also included researchers from MIT and Argonne National Laboratory who facilitated computational resources and experimental confirmation of the solid-state magnesium electrolyte.

This battery technology is currently only up for demonstration “with really good magnesium mobility” through the solid-state electrolyte. Still, there is work to be done which includes eliminating the small amount of electron leakage.

To know more, you can read Berkely Lab’s blog post using this link. The findings of the research titled “High magnesium mobility in ternary spinel chalcogenides” have been published in Nature Communications.

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