Synergistic Mixture of Electrolyte Additives: A Route to a High-Efficiency Mg–Air Battery

Abstract

Magnesium primary cells are currently experiencing a renaissance following the suggestion of new strategies to boost their performance. The strategies suggested will maintain utilization efficiencies of 30–70%, which is considered to be relatively modest. In this work, the highest ever reported level of utilization efficiency of 82% is achieved for a Mg-based primary cell using a synergistic combination of electrolyte additives. It is demonstrated that the joint use of sodium nitrate and salicylate as electrolyte additives allows us to reach the aforementioned utilization efficiency of 5 mA/cm2 via offering an effective suppression of anode self-corrosion and uniform Mg dissolution under discharge conditions.