RESUMEN
Operando magnetic susceptibility measurements of sodium ion cathode materials during repetitive electrochemical cycling enable a continuous and bulk sensitive monitoring of the transition metal oxidation states. Such measurements on NaxV2(PO4)3 identified vanadium to be the only ion undergoing oxidation/reduction processes upon battery operation. For the initial battery charging-discharging cycle as well as for the first cycle after prolonged room temperature storage, however, peculiarities within the magnetic susceptibility measurements indicate parasitic side reactions, likely on the cathode surface.
RESUMEN
Synthesizing Li-ion-conducting solid electrolytes with application-relevant properties for new energy storage devices is a challenging task that relies on a few design principles to tune ionic conductivity. When starting with originally poor ionic compounds, in many cases, a combination of several strategies, such as doping or substitution, is needed to achieve sufficiently high ionic conductivities. For nanostructured materials, the introduction of conductor-insulator interfacial regions represents another important design strategy. Unfortunately, for most of the two-phase nanostructured ceramics studied so far, the lower limiting conductivity values needed for applications could not be reached. Here, we show that in nanoconfined LiBH4/Al2O3 prepared by melt infiltration, a percolating network of fast conductor-insulator Li+ diffusion pathways could be realized. These heterocontacts provide regions with extremely rapid 7Li NMR spin fluctuations giving direct evidence for very fast Li+ jump processes in both nanoconfined LiBH4/Al2O3 and LiBH4-LiI/Al2O3. Compared to the nanocrystalline, Al2O3-free reference system LiBH4-LiI, nanoconfinement leads to a strongly enhanced recovery of the 7Li NMR longitudinal magnetization. The fact that almost no difference is seen between LiBH4-LiI/Al2O3 and LiBH4/Al2O3 unequivocally reveals that the overall 7Li NMR spin-lattice relaxation rates are solely controlled by the spin fluctuations near or in the conductor-insulator interfacial regions. Thus, the conductor-insulator nanoeffect, which in the ideal case relies on a percolation network of space charge regions, is independent of the choice of the bulk crystal structure of LiBH4, either being orthorhombic (LiBH4/Al2O3) or hexagonal (LiBH4-LiI/Al2O3). 7Li (and 1H) NMR shows that rapid local interfacial Li-ion dynamics is corroborated by rather small activation energies on the order of only 0.1 eV. In addition, the LiI-stabilized layer-structured form of LiBH4 guarantees fast two-dimensional (2D) bulk ion dynamics and contributes to facilitating fast long-range ion transport.
RESUMEN
Solid electrolytes based on LiBH4 receive much attention because of their high ionic conductivity, electrochemical robustness, and low interfacial resistance against Li metal. The highly conductive hexagonal modification of LiBH4 can be stabilized via the incorporation of LiI. If the resulting LiBH4-LiI is confined to the nanopores of an oxide, such as Al2O3, interface-engineered LiBH4-LiI/Al2O3 is obtained that revealed promising properties as a solid electrolyte. The underlying principles of Li+ conduction in such a nanocomposite are, however, far from being understood completely. Here, we used broadband conductivity spectroscopy and 1H, 6Li, 7Li, 11B, and 27Al nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to study structural and dynamic features of nanoconfined LiBH4-LiI/Al2O3. In particular, diffusion-induced 1H, 7Li, and 11B NMR spin-lattice relaxation measurements and 7Li-pulsed field gradient (PFG) NMR experiments were used to extract activation energies and diffusion coefficients. 27Al magic angle spinning NMR revealed surface interactions of LiBH4-LiI with pentacoordinated Al sites, and two-component 1H NMR line shapes clearly revealed heterogeneous dynamic processes. These results show that interfacial regions have a determining influence on overall ionic transport (0.1 mS cm-1 at 293 K). Importantly, electrical relaxation in the LiBH4-LiI regions turned out to be fully homogenous. This view is supported by 7Li NMR results, which can be interpreted with an overall (averaged) spin ensemble subjected to uniform dipolar magnetic and quadrupolar electric interactions. Finally, broadband conductivity spectroscopy gives strong evidence for 2D ionic transport in the LiBH4-LiI bulk regions which we observed over a dynamic range of 8 orders of magnitude. Macroscopic diffusion coefficients from PFG NMR agree with those estimated from measurements of ionic conductivity and nuclear spin relaxation. The resulting 3D ionic transport in nanoconfined LiBH4-LiI/Al2O3 is characterized by an activation energy of 0.43 eV.
RESUMEN
Solid-state electrolytes are crucial for the realization of safe and high capacity all-solid-state batteries. Lithium-containing complex hydrides represent a promising class of solid-state electrolytes, but they exhibit low ionic conductivities at room temperature. Ion substitution and nanoconfinement are the main strategies to overcome this challenge. Here, we report on the synthesis of nanoconfined anion-substituted complex hydrides in which the two strategies are effectively combined to achieve a profound increase in the ionic conductivities at ambient temperature. We show that the nanoconfinement of anion substituted LiBH4 (LiBH4-LiI and LiBH4-LiNH2) leads to an enhancement of the room temperature conductivity by a factor of 4 to 10 compared to nanoconfined LiBH4 and nonconfined LiBH4-LiI and LiBH4-LiNH2, concomitant with a lowered activation energy of 0.44 eV for Li-ion transport. Our work demonstrates that a combination of partial ion substitution and nanoconfinement is an effective strategy to boost the ionic conductivity of complex hydrides. The strategy could be applicable to other classes of solid-state electrolytes.