Revealing the Pnma crystal structure and ion-transport mechanism of the Li3YCl6 solid electrolyte

  • Lv Hu
  • , Jinze Zhu
  • , Chaomin Duan
  • , Jinfeng Zhu
  • , Jinzhu Wang
  • , Kai Wang
  • , Zhenqi Gu
  • , Zhiwei Xi
  • , Jipeng Hao
  • , Yan Chen
  • , Jie Ma
  • , Jin Xun Liu
  • , Cheng Ma

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

28 Scopus citations

Abstract

Chloride solid electrolytes represented by Li3YCl6 excel simultaneously in ionic conductivity, deformability, and oxidative stability; their structure-property relationship would provide guiding principles for designing high-performance solid electrolytes. Here, we report that the prototype system Li3YCl6 does not exhibit the P3¯m1 symmetry as commonly believed. This structure occurs only when the material partially decomposes at an overly high annealing temperature of 550°C. With the decomposition being suppressed at 450°C, the material shows a Pnma symmetry instead. Based on this orthorhombic structure, the ion-transport mechanism is clarified through neutron diffraction and first-principles computation. Guided by the established structure-property relationship, the efficient ion transport previously achievable only in the low-crystallinity state is realized in highly crystalline materials. The all-solid-state cells formed by this high-crystallinity material and LiNi0.8Mn0.1Co0.1O2 deliver performance exceeding most reported Li3YCl6-based cells; under 3 C at 25°C, the capacity retention is above 80% for 780 cycles.

Original languageEnglish
Article number101428
JournalCell Reports Physical Science
Volume4
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 21 2023

Funding

C.M. acknowledges financial support from the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences ( XDB0450201 ), the National Key R&D Program of China ( 2018YFA0209600 and 2017YFA0208300 ), the National Natural Science Foundation of China ( 51802302 ), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities ( WK3430000006 ), and the National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory ( KY2060000199 ). J.-X.L. acknowledges the start-up funds of University of Science and Technology of China ( KY2060000171 ), the National Natural Science Foundation of Anhui province ( 2108085QB62 ), USTC Research Funds of the Double First-Class Initiative ( YD2060002012 ), and K.C. Wong Education ( GJTD-2020-15 ) and high-performance computational resources provided by the University of Science and Technology of China ( http://scc.ustc.edu.cn ) and Hefei advanced computing center. J.M. acknowledges financial support from the National Science Foundation of China ( U2032213 ).

Keywords

  • chloride solid electrolytes
  • crystal structure
  • first-principles computation
  • ionic conductivity
  • neutron diffraction

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