Lead dioxide coated hollow glass microspheres as conductive additives for lead acid batteries

The major reason for the inability of a lead acid battery to achieve higher specific free energy values is that much of the active material in both the positive and the negative electrode is not discharged. Using conductive additives, such as lead dioxide-coated hollow glass microspheres, in the electrodes would improve the utilization of active material and could significantly increase the specific energy of the lead acid batteries. In this paper, we present a method for making hollow glass microspheres conductive by coating them with lead dioxide via the electroless deposition technique. (C) 2009 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.