High lithium ion conductivity glass-ceramics in Li2O–Al2O3–TiO2–P2O5 from nanoscaled glassy powders by mechanical milling

Abstract Mechanical milling (MM) has been used to prepare the nanosized Li 1.4 Al 0.4 Ti 1.6 (PO 4 ) 3 (denoted LATP) glassy powders, which was converted into glass-ceramics through thermal treating at 700–1000 °C. The XRD, TEM, FESEM and ac impedance techniques were used to characterize the products. The results showed that completely amorphous products were prepared by MM for 40 h, and single-phase LiTi 2 (PO 4 ) 3 -type structured glass-ceramics were obtained by further heat treatment. The lithium ion conductivity of the glass-ceramics increased with the growth of the crystalline phase and decrease of the grain size. The highest bulk conductivity ( σ b ) of 1.09 × 10 − 3  S cm − 1 with an energy of activation as low as 0.28 eV was obtained at room temperature for the specimen treated at 900 °C for 6 h. The high conductivity, easy fabrication and low cost make the LATP glass-ceramics promising to be used as inorganic solid electrolyte for all-solid-state Li-ion rechargeable batteries.