The glass-ceramic composite electrolytes based on tetragonal LiLaZrO (t-LLZ) and cubic Al-doped LiLaZrO (c-LLZ) with the LiPO glass additive have been prepared. The electrical conductivity and microstructure of the t-LLZ/LiPO and c-LLZ/LiPO composites have been investigated. The phase evolution of electrolytes has been studied using XRD, SEM, and Raman spectroscopy. It was indicated that the impurities formation depends on the composition of the composite. The phase composition of the solid electrolytes determines their thermal properties, which have been studied by the DSC method. The relative density of the obtained composite electrolytes was established to be higher than one of the sintered t-LLZ and c-LLZ. The Li conductivity of the t-LLZ-based composites gradually increased from 4.6 × 10 S cm (undoped t-LLZ) to 2.5 × 10 S cm (t-LLZ/5 wt % LiPO composite) at 25 °C. The highest total conductivity of the c-LLZ/LiPO composites has been achieved by introducing 1 wt % additive (0.11 mS cm at room temperature), whereas further doping resulted in the impurities formation.
Solid
electrolytes with high values of lithium-ion conductivity
are required for the creation of high-energy lithium and lithium-ion
power sources, and compounds with a garnet structure based on Li7La3Zr2O12 (LLZO) are one
of the candidate materials for this purpose. In the present work,
solid electrolytes of the Li7–x
La3Zr2–x
Ta
x
O12 system with x = 0.0–2.0
were synthesized using the sol–gel method. According to X-ray
diffraction analysis, all of the compounds with x ≥ 0.1 have the same cubic modification with the space group Ia3̅d. However, an increase in Ta
concentration affects the short-range order crystal structure of these
materials, resulting in higher local distortions, which was shown
by pair distribution function (PDF) analysis. Particularly, the PDF
data indicate an increase in the probability of Li ions to locally
occupy not only two typical positions, Li196 h and Li224
d, but also a third one, Li348 g. The maximum value of lithium-ion
conductivity in the studied system was observed for the Li6.4La3Zr1.4Ta0.6O12 compound
(i.e., x = 0.6) and had the value of 1.4 × 10–4 S cm–1 at 25 °C. This is consistent
with the results of density functional theory (DFT) modeling, which
confirmed that a moderate Ta-doping (up to x <
1.0) is most suitable for enhancing Li diffusion in LLZO materials.
A combination of DFT modeling, structural characterization of the
short and average structures, and conductivity measurements in this
work allowed getting insight into this important class of Li-conducting
oxides and ideas on improving their properties.
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