In recent years, owing to the rapid development of portable electronic and electrical appliances, the market for rechargeable batteries has increased at a high rare. The nickel-metal hydride battery (Ni/MH) is one of the more promising types, because of its high capacity, high-rate charge/discharge capability and non-polluting nature. This type of battery uses a hydrogen storage alloy as its negative electrode. The characteristics of the Ni/MH battery, including discharge voltage, high-rate discharge capability and charge/discharge cycle lifetime are mainly determined by the construction of the negative electrode and the composition of the hydrogen-absorbing alloy. The negative electrode of the Ni/MH battery described in this paper was made from a mixture of hydrogen-absorbing alloy, nickel powder and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). A multicomponent MmNi(5)-based alloy (Mm(0.95)Ti(0.05)Ni(3.85) Co0.45Mn0.35Al0.35) was used as the hydrogen-absorbing alloy. The discharge characteristics of the negative electrode, including discharge capacity, cycle lifetime, and polarization overpotential, were studied by means of electrochemical experiments and analysis. The decay of the discharge capacity for the Ni/MH battery (AA sie, 1 Ah) was about 1% after 100 charge/discharge cycles and 10% after 500 charge/discharge cycles,