Synthesis and characterization of pectin based biopolymer electrolytes for magnesium batteries

Abstract

Energy has become one of the major challenges that the human society face for quite a few decades. Enormous efforts have been undertaken to meet the increasing demand for energy and one such effort is the vast development in the area of energy storage devices, focusing mainly on lithium and magnesium based batteries (Aziz et al. 2018). Compared to lithium based batteries, magnesium based batteries offer many advantages: when magnesium is used as an anode material, the energy density is found to increase and safety is enhanced, the use of magnesium for battery technology reduces the dependence on lithium as a raw material. Compared to lithium, magnesium is easily available, and therefore, magnesium batteries would be cheaper than conventional lithium-based batteries. So the researchers focused on developing solid-state Mg2+ ion-conducting electrolytes. newlineSolid Polymer Electrolytes (SPEs) have become the most important area of research owing to their vast applications in electrochemical devices. Synthetic solid polymer electrolytes are not biodegradable even though they offer many advantages like no leakage of electrolyte, provides good chemical, mechanical, and thermal stability. Biopolymers are interesting owing to their abundance in nature, low cost, and biodegradation properties. Hence, biopolymers are used in the preparation of some solid polymer electrolytes. newline newline newline