Lithium ionic conduction and relaxation dynamics of spark plasma sintered Li5La3Ta2O12 garnet nanoceramics

In the present work, nanoceramics of Li5La3Ta2O12 (LLT) lithium ion conductors with the garnet-like structure are fabricated by spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique at different temperatures of 850 degrees C, 875 degrees C, and 900 degrees C (SPS-850, SPS-875, and SPS-900). The grain size of the SPS nanoceramics is in the 50 to 100 nm range, indicating minimal grain growth during the SPS experiments. The ionic conduction and relaxation properties of the current garnets are studied by impedance spectroscopy (IS) measurements. The SPS-875 garnets exhibit the highest total Li ionic conductivity of 1.25 x 10(-6) S/cm at RT, which is in the same range as the LLT garnets prepared by conventional sintering technique. The high conductivity of SPS-875 sample is due to the enhanced mobility of Li ions by one order of magnitude compared to SPS-850 and SPS-900 ceramics. The concentration of mobile Li+ ions, n(c), and their mobility are estimated from the analysis of the conductivity spectra at different temperatures. nc is found to be independent of temperature for the SPS nanoceramics, which implies that the conduction process is controlled by the Li+ mobility. Interestingly, we found that only a small fraction of lithium ions of 3.9% out of the total lithium content are mobile and contribute to the conduction process. Moreover, the relaxation dynamics in the investigated materials have been studied through the electric modulus formalism.