Nebulized spray pyrolysis of Al-doped Li7La3Zr2O12 solid electrolyte for battery applications

Nebulized spray pyrolysis followed by consolidation and sintering was used for the first time to prepare Al-doped garnet-based Li7-3xLa3Zr2AlxO12 (x = 0-0.25) (LLZO) ultra-fine grained ceramics. The structural changes from the tetragonal (x = 0), via a mixture of the cubic and the tetragonal (x = 0.07, 0.10) to the cubic modification (x = 0.15-0.25) were observed. Al-27 NMR study showed that aluminum occupy the tetrahedral 24d lithium sites. Despite their low relative density (47-56%), preliminary ionic conductivities of the LLZO ceramics, were found to be 1.2 . 10(-6) S cm(-1) and 4.4 . 10(-6) S cm(-1) for tetragonal and cubic LLZO at room temperature, with activation energies of 0.55 eV and 0.49 eV, respectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.