According to the study, Zirconium is a non-lithium element that exists in abundance in the Earth’s crust, compared to other materials used in solid state batteries. This can also lead to more scalable and cost-effective production in the future.
The new material, lithium zirconium chloride, offers a reduced material cost and necessary performance, all while remaining stable. Solid state batteries have become a long-promised and underdelivered battery technology that is often jokingly referred to as perpetually “two years away.”
While there have been several breakthroughs over the years through experimentation with different materials, electrolytes, and cathodes, the largest hurdle for solid state batteries remains the means of cost-effective mass production, to compete with traditional lithium-ion batteries.
As published on Nature Communications this week, a research team from the University of Science and Technology of China led by Professor Ma Cheng believes its new material will help accelerate solid state battery production, due to its low-cost and comprehensive performance.
LLZO is a promising SSE material for lithium-ion batteries due to its high ionic conductivity, wide electrochemical window, and good chemical stability. Both conventional and novel solid-state methods have been developed for its synthesis, each with advantages and drawbacks (see Fig. 4). Copyright Springer Link Publications 2021.
Solid-state Li metal batteries that utilize a Li metal anode and a layered oxide or conversion cathode have the potential to almost double the specific energy of today’s state-of-the-art Li-ion batteries, which use a liquid electrolyte.