A porous gel polymer electrolyte based on poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) was for the first time prepared via a foaming technology using salicylic acid as a foaming agent. The pores are evenly distributed with an average diameter of about 400nm. The results from TG/DTA, XRD and FT-IR show that there are no vesicant residues after the PVDF film was heat-treated at 200°C to get the porous structure. When the film is gelled with liquid electrolyte, the ion conductivity can be up to 4.8×10−3 Scm−1 at room temperature and the activation energy for ionic transfer is 10.2kJmol−1. LiCoO2 cathode also presents good cycling performance. These primary results show great promise for this simple method to prepare porous gel polymer electrolytes for practical application in lithium ion batteries.