Influence of Li10GeP2S12-type solid electrolyte on cell thermodynamics

We elucidate few critical facts about the lithium superionic conductor (Li10GeP2S12) and few other compounds of the same family as the electrolyte in Li-ion cells. The dimensionality of diffusion process and existence of ‘structural’ lithiums are not well understood in this material. From the ab-initio MD simulations, we find that the material transport Li-ions predominantly in the crystallographic c-direction. Nevertheless, the cross-channel diffusion is significant as well. We explored the mobility of individual Li-ions and do not find evidence that supports the proposition of structural Li-ions in LGPS. We find nominal effect of local Ge-P ordering and of Li-concentration change on diffusivity, which not only provides information about the invariance of diffusivity at different conditions of operation, but also ensures that identification of the ground state structure in LGPS having partially occupied Li and Ge/P sublattices should have minimal effect on the diffusion analysis. We computed the dilute Li insertion and extraction voltages for LGPS from ab-initio total energy calculation. The dilute voltages indicate that the material is prone to react by exchanging Li-ions with the electrodes at typical operating range of voltages indicating formation of some interphase at the electrode-electrolyte interface, which necessitates further experimental investigation