Prof. Cheol-Min Park and colleagues at ABML (Advanced Battery Materials Lab. in KIT) in Korea are attempting to meet the ever increasing demands for better batteries.
Rechargeable Mg battery has been long considered as a highly promising technology for energy storage and conversion. Mg possesses several characteristics that rank it as one of the most auspicious metal anodes for high energy-density batteries. The fast insertion kinetics for bivalent Mg2+ ions was attributed to the unusual structure that provides a large number of vacant sites, short distances between them, and the metallic Mo6 cluster that easily compensates the charge-unbalance due to the introduction of bivalent ions. Hence the DCC electrolyte solutions enable both 100% reversible Mg deposition and insertion into these chevrel phases with no side reactions.