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Sintering mechanism and greatly enhanced ionic conductivity of Mo-doped Li7La3Zr2O12 ceramics via a novel covered sintering

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Abstract

Due to the increasingly urgent safety and energy density concerns of lithium-ion batteries, more and more attention has been attracted by the Li7La3Zr2O12 (LLZO)-based solid electrolytes with high ion conductivity and chemical stability against Li-metal. However, to prepare the high-quality LLZO ceramic electrolyte with high-ion conductivity and density, there is still a big challenge of the serious “Li-loss” and the abnormal grain growth during the long-time high-temperature sintering process. A novel covered sintering method is put forward to prepare the high-quality Mo-doped LLZO (LLZMO) ceramic electrolyte. The sintering strategy effectively suppresses the Li-loss to obtain the LLZMO dense ceramics with cubic garnet phase and tight grain boundaries. The LLZMO ceramics sintered at lower temperature of 1050 °C for 2 h via the novel covered sintering exhibit high density (ρr = 92.3%) and high-ionic conductivity of 6.08 × 10–4 S cm−1 at 25 °C, which are close to those of LLZO-based ceramics prepared by hot pressing sintering, ultrafast high-temperature sintering (UHS). The novel covered sintering provides an energy-saving, low-cost and high-efficient strategy to prepare the high-quality LLZO-based ceramics electrolyte.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52102126) and Opening Testing Funds for the Valuable Equipment of Fuzhou University (Grant No. 2023T008).

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52102126), and Opening Testing Funds for the Valuable Equipment of Fuzhou University (Grant No. 2023T008).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Advanced Ceramics, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Fuzhou University, 2 Xueyuan Road, University Town, Fuzhou, 350108, China

    Zonggui Gong, Nanlan Wang, Haoxuan Guo, Peishu Zhu, Qijing Wang, Hang Yu, Yu Zhang, Min Gao & Xinghua Zheng

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  1. Zonggui Gong
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  2. Nanlan Wang
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  3. Haoxuan Guo
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  6. Hang Yu
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  7. Yu Zhang
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  8. Min Gao
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Contributions

Zonggui Gong: investigation, writing—original draft. Wang Nanlan: data curation, writing—original draft. Haoxuan Guo: investigation, data curation. Peishu Zhu: data curation, conceptualization. Qijing Wang: investigation. Hang Yu: investigation. Yu Zhang: data curation. Min Gao: funding acquisition, writing—review & editing. Xinghua Zheng, conceptualization, supervision, writing—review & editing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Min Gao or Xinghua Zheng.

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Gong, Z., Wang, N., Guo, H. et al. Sintering mechanism and greatly enhanced ionic conductivity of Mo-doped Li7La3Zr2O12 ceramics via a novel covered sintering. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 35, 670 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-024-12430-w

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