Lithium conducting glass ceramic with Nasicon structure

Lithium ion conducting glass and glass ceramic of the composition Li1.4[Al0.4Ge1.6(PO4)3], have been synthesized. The monolithic glass pieces on thermal treatment resulted in single-phase glass ceramic with the Nasicon structure. Experiments with different electrodes proved that the lithium electrodes provide accurate values for the ionic conductivity using impedance spectroscopy. σionic of the glass ceramic was found to be 3.8×10−5 S cm−1 at 40°C with an activation energy (Ea) of 0.52 eV. The corresponding values for the glass are 2.7×10−9 S cm−1 and 0.95 eV, respectively. The Arrhenius dependence of σionic with temperature in glass and glass ceramic is interpreted with a hopping mechanism from which the microscopic characteristics of the lithium cation motion are deduced.