Increased ionic conductivity of a NASICON lithium ion conductor under the influence of mesoporous materials

In this study, we demonstrate that the introduction of the SBA-15 mesoporous material improves the ionic conductivity of lithium aluminum titanium phosphate (LATP) electrolytes. SBA-15-doped LATP was prepared by both the conventional solid-state and sol-gel methods. The experimental results show that this introduction of SBA-15 can refine the grains of LATP and improve its ionic conductivity despite the decrease in the measured density upon doping. The doped LATP shows the highest ionic conductivity (4.42 x 10(-4)Scm(-1)) and the lowest activation energy (0.24eV) at 3 wt% SBA-15. The improvement in the ionic conductivity is attributed to the presence of an amorphous layer due to the mesoporous nature of the material. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.