First-principles study of the structural and dynamic properties of the liquid and amorphous Li–Si alloys

Abstract

We have performed density functional theory calculations and ab initio molecular dynamics to investigate the structures and dynamic properties of the liquid and amorphous LixSi alloys over a range of composition from x = 1.0 - 4.8. Our results show that Si atoms can form a variety of covalently bonded polyanions with diverse local bonding structures in the liquid alloys. Like in c-LiSi, Si atoms can form a continuous bond network in liquid Li1.0Si at 1050 K, while it gradually disintegrates into many smaller Si polyanions as the Li content increases in the alloys. The average sizes of Si polyanions in these liquid alloys were found to be relatively larger than those in their crystalline counterparts, which can even persist in the highly lithiated Li4.81Si alloy at 1500 K. Our results also show that amorphous LixSi alloys have similar local bonding structures but a largely increased short-range order as compared to their liquid counterparts. The differences between the average coordination number of each atomic pair in amorphous solids and that in the liquids are less than 1.1. Furthermore, our calculations reveal that Li and Si atoms can exhibit very distinct dynamic behaviors in the liquids and their diffusivities appear to be largely dependent on the chemical composition of the alloys. The diffusivity of Li was found to increase with the Li content in the alloys primarily because of the reduced interactions between Li and Si atoms, while the Si diffusivity also increases due to the gradual disintegration of the strongly interconnected Si bond network. The diffusivity of Li in amorphous LixSi was predicted to lie in the range between 10(-7) and 10(-9) cm(2)/s at 300 K, which is more than 20-fold larger than that of Si over the composition range considered. Our calculations further show that the diffusivities of both Li and Si can increase by two orders of magnitude as x increases from 1.0 to 3.57 in amorphous LixSi, indicating a more profound dependence on the alloy composition than those in the liquid state.