A Single Material Battery

Bulk-type all-solid-state lithium-ion batteries with nonflammable inorganic solid electrolyte are being considered as the ultimate solution for safe lithium-ion batteries. The current all-solid-state lithium-ion batteries suffer from low power density mainly due to strong kinetic limitation at the electrode/electrolyte interface. Here, we report a novel concept of a single-material all-solid-state lithium-ion battery, wherein a single Li₁₀GeP₂S₁₂ serves as an electrolyte, an anode, and a cathode, to eliminate the highly resistive interface between the electrodes and electrolyte. The realization of the single-Li₁₀GeP₂S₁₂ battery is based on the fact that the Li-S and Ge-S components in Li₁₀GeP₂S₁₂ could act as the active centers for lithiation/delithiation as a cathode and an anode, respectively, when electronically-conductive carbon is mixed, while pure Li₁₀GeP₂S₁₂ can be used as an electrolyte. This unique concept of a single-material lithium-ion battery can be extended to other solid-state battery systems, providing a new direction for high-power, high-energy, long-cycling solid-state batteries.

This work was mainly supported as part of Nanostructures for Electrical Energy Storage (NEES), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award Number DESC0001160.