Designing Intrinsically Fast-Amorphizing Solid Electrolytes with Low Processing Cost
The processing cost of solid electrolytes (SEs) is a critical yet underexplored barrier to the commercialization of all-solid-state Li batteries, and this issue is a chemical challenge. Some SEs such as Zr-based (oxy)chlorides have commercially feasible raw material cost. However, to reach the highly amorphous state needed for optimal performance, prolonged ball milling of 20−80 h is often needed, incurring prohibitive processing cost. Here, we propose a strategy for designing SEs with intrinsically fast amorphization kinetics: changing the lithium source from the typically employed LiCl to an easily amorphized compound. Using Li 3 PO 4 as the proof-of-concept, the resulting Li 3 PO 4 -ZrCl 4 achieves nearly full amorphization within 3 h of ball milling, lowering the processing cost by ∼90%. Meanwhile, effective amorphization endows the material with an ionic conductivity of 2.23 mS cm −1 and exceptional mechanical compliance, enabling stable all-solid-state cell cycling with an areal capacity of 9.89 mAh cm −2 . This strategy opens a new avenue to SEs with intrinsically low processing cost.
Authors
- Jingming Yao
- Fengqian Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2330-6403)
- Zhuoying Zhu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1775-7651)
- Cheng Ma (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9761-322X)
- Hui Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9198-3951)
- Changshun Li
- Jianyu Huang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8424-5368)
- Jun Jiang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6116-5605)
- Yue Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0098-5359)
- Yi-Xiang Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4021-4228)
- X Y Zhou
- Mingrui Yin
- Lv Hu
Institutions
- University of Science and Technology of China (CN)
- Yanshan University (CN)
- Hefei University (CN)
- Hefei National Center for Physical Sciences at Nanoscale (CN)
- Microscale (United States) (US)
- New Technology (Israel) (IL)
- Nano Energy (South Africa) (ZA)
- State Key Laboratory of Metastable Materials Science and Technology
Publication Details
- Journal
- ACS Energy Letters
- Published
- 2026-07-16
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1021/acsenergylett.6c01077
- Primary Topic
- Advanced Battery Materials and Technologies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province
- University of Science and Technology of China
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities