Modeling of ion agglomeration in magnesium electrolytes and its impacts on the battery performance

The choice of electrolyte has a crucial influence on the performance of rechargeable magnesium batteries. In multivalent electrolytes an agglomeration of ions to pairs or bigger clusters may affect the transport in the electrolyte and the reaction at the electrodes. In this work we include the formation of clusters in our general model for magnesium batteries. In our model we consistently take into account the effect of cluster formation on transport, thermodynamics and kinetics. The model is used to analyze the effect of ion clustering in a Mg[B(hfip) 4 ] 2 \ DME electrolyte. It becomes apparent that the ion agglomeration is able to explain experimentally observed phenomena at high salt concentrations.