Our zirconia-free NaSICON paper in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A collection celebrating RSC Fellows

Our paper “Zirconia-free NaSICON solid electrolyte materials for sodium all-solid-state batteries”, J. Mater. Chem. A 11, 23233–23242 (2023), is part of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s collection “Celebrating the scientific accomplishments of RSC Fellows” in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A. Piero Canepa is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

NaSICON solid electrolytes, Na_1+xZr₂Si_xP_3−xO₁₂ (0 ≤ x ≤ 3), are widely studied for all-solid-state sodium batteries, but as synthesized they always contain monoclinic zirconia (ZrO₂) as the main impurity, which may lower the Na-ion conductivity of the electrolyte layer. By engineering the quantity of zirconium precursors, we made zirconia-free NaSICON, as revealed by synchrotron X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy and density functional theory simulations. Its total ionic conductivity at room temperature is about 3.49 mS cm⁻¹, with a bulk conductivity of about 10.05 mS cm⁻¹, which makes it an excellent Na-ion conductor for all-solid-state batteries.

The paper was written by Aaron J. K. Tieu, Eunike Mahayoni, Yuheng Li, Zeyu Deng, François Fauth, Jean-Noël Chotard, Vincent Seznec, Stefan Adams, Christian Masquelier and Piero Canepa.