Research Digest — 2026-07-15¶
Halide Solid Electrolytes¶
1. Mechanically robust halide electrolytes for high-performance all-solid-state batteries¶
Source: Nature Communications (s41467-025-64726-y) · 📅 2026-07-08 · ↗ Open paper
Jeff Sakamoto's group demonstrates that stress mismatch between SSEs and positive electrode particles causes contact failure and uneven stress distribution at solid-solid interfaces. The work develops mechanically robust halide electrolytes that buffer interfacial stress while maintaining high ionic conductivity, addressing a critical bottleneck in ASSB practical deployment.
Relevance to DENG.Group
Directly relevant to Yan Li and Mengke Li's halide electrolyte research. The mechanical stability angle complements their ion transport and degradation studies — understanding stress-transport coupling is essential for realistic performance predictions.
2. Halide-based solid electrolytes: opportunities and challenges in the pursuit of practical all-solid-state batteries¶
Source: Energy & Environmental Science (d5eb00064e, 2025) · 📅 2026-06-20 · ↗ Open paper
Comprehensive review covering Li- and Na-based halide SSEs, covering crystal chemistry, synthesis routes, ionic conductivity benchmarks, and electrochemical stability. Provides a systematic comparison across different halogen anion families (Cl, Br, I) and discusses moisture sensitivity, interphase formation, and scalable manufacturing.
Relevance to DENG.Group
Essential reference for Yan Li and Mengke Li. The systematic structure-property comparison across halide families directly supports their simulation studies on ion transport mechanisms and degradation pathways in halide electrolytes.
3. Fluorinated coating stabilizing halide solid electrolytes for all-solid-state batteries¶
Source: Energy Storage Materials (S2405829725001072) · 📅 2026-06-18 · ↗ Open paper
Demonstrates that fluorinated surface coatings significantly improve the chemical stability of halide solid electrolytes against moisture and cathode materials. The coating suppresses interfacial side reactions while maintaining high ionic conductivity and good deformability of the halide SSE.
Relevance to DENG.Group
Relevant to Yan Li's degradation simulation work — the fluorinated coating strategy provides a concrete interface engineering approach that can be modeled computationally to understand passivation mechanisms.
4. Advances in non/low-crystalline solid-state electrolytes enabled by halide chemistries¶
Source: Joule (S2542-4351(25)00441-6) · 📅 2026-06-25 · ↗ Open paper
Reports on a new class of non/low-crystalline halide solid electrolytes (NCHSSEs) exhibiting superionic conductivity. The amorphous structure eliminates grain boundary resistance and enables unique ion transport pathways distinct from crystalline halides, opening a new design space for glassy halide electrolytes.
Relevance to DENG.Group
Highly relevant to Mengke Li's ion transport mechanism studies. The non-crystalline transport pathways represent a fundamentally different conduction mechanism that warrants ab initio investigation, and the absence of grain boundaries connects to Cheng Peng's work.
5. From Promise to Production: Strategic roadmap for halide-based all-solid-state battery pilot lines¶
Source: Advanced Energy Materials (aenm.202505286) · 📅 2026-06-28 · ↗ Open paper
A perspective article charting a strategic roadmap for transitioning halide-based ASSBs from lab-scale cells to pilot-line production. Covers electrode processing, dry-film fabrication, stack pressure requirements, and cost analysis for scaling halide SSEs, identifying key manufacturing bottlenecks.
Relevance to DENG.Group
Important for Jerry's strategic positioning and proposal writing. Understanding pilot-line challenges helps frame the group's computational work in terms of industrially relevant problems, strengthening the impact narrative for funding applications.
ML Interatomic Potentials¶
6. An Accurate Charge-Aware Machine-Learning Interatomic Potential for Battery Electrolyte Simulations¶
Source: ChemRxiv (chemrxiv-2025-x1km2) · 📅 2026-06-22 · ↗ Open paper
Introduces a charge-aware MLIP architecture that explicitly handles variable charge states in battery electrolyte simulations. The model combines local environment descriptors with charge equilibration to capture redox chemistry and charge transfer during ion transport, enabling accurate simulation of electrochemical interfaces.
Relevance to DENG.Group
Highly relevant to Yanhao Deng's ML potential development. The charge-aware approach addresses a key limitation of standard MLIPs for battery applications where charge transfer at interfaces is critical. Methodology is directly transferable to solid electrolyte systems.
7. Assessment and Application of Universal Machine Learning Interatomic Potentials for Materials Screening¶
Source: ACS Materials Letters (acsmaterialslett.5c00336) · 📅 2026-06-15 · ↗ Open paper
Systematically benchmarks universal MLIPs (GRACE, DPA, MACE-MP-0, etc.) against DFT reference data for diverse materials classes. Evaluates accuracy for formation energies, elastic constants, phonon spectra, and interface energies. Finds that domain-specific fine-tuning consistently improves performance over zero-shot universal models.
Relevance to DENG.Group
Directly relevant to Yanhao Deng's work on ML potentials for solid electrolytes. The benchmarking results inform model selection, and the fine-tuning methodology is applicable to his training pipeline for battery-specific potentials.
8. Enabling accurate modelling of solid electrolyte materials with amorphous-structure-trained MLIPs¶
Source: Materials Horizons (d5mh01343g, 2025) · 📅 2026-06-05 · ↗ Open paper
Demonstrates that MLIPs trained using amorphous structures as reference data achieve superior accuracy for simulating disordered and glassy solid electrolytes. The approach captures local structural motifs that crystalline-trained models miss, improving predictive capability for ionic conductivity and diffusion mechanisms in amorphous SSEs.
Relevance to DENG.Group
Relevant to both Yanhao Deng (ML potential methodology) and Naibing Wu (polymer electrolyte simulation). The amorphous-structure training strategy is essential for polymer and composite electrolytes where crystalline reference data is insufficient.
Polymer Electrolytes & Ion Transport¶
9. Superionic conduction in solid polymer electrolytes via decoupled ion transport¶
Source: Polymer Chemistry (d5py01070e, 2026) · 📅 2026-06-18 · ↗ Open paper
Reports a breakthrough in solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) where ion transport is decoupled from polymer segmental relaxation, achieving superionic conduction. The design uses tethered-anion frameworks that create continuous ion hopping pathways, bypassing the conventional coupling between ion mobility and chain dynamics that limits traditional PEO-based SPEs.
Relevance to DENG.Group
Directly relevant to Naibing Wu's solid polymer electrolyte simulation work. The decoupled transport mechanism represents a paradigm shift from the standard Vogel-Fulcher-Tammann picture, and his MD simulations could help validate and optimize these new polymer architectures.
10. Composite solid-state electrolytes for all-solid-state lithium batteries: design principles and interfaces¶
Source: Energy Advances (d4ya00542b, 2025) · 📅 2026-06-10 · ↗ Open paper
Comprehensive review of composite SSEs combining inorganic fillers with polymer matrices. Covers design principles for optimizing filler-polymer interfaces, strategies for enhancing ionic conductivity through percolation networks, and computational approaches for predicting composite electrolyte performance.
Relevance to DENG.Group
Core reference for Naibing Wu's composite polymer electrolyte simulations. The filler-polymer interface design principles directly inform his simulation setups and help identify promising composite compositions for detailed study.
Grain Boundaries & Defects¶
11. Accelerating ion transport in polycrystalline conductors: On pores and grain boundaries¶
Source: Preprint (Florida State University, 2025) · 📅 2026-06-20 · ↗ Open paper
Identifies that poor grain boundary ionic conduction in polycrystalline solid electrolytes is strongly correlated with extended defects such as microcracks and porosity, rather than intrinsic GB chemistry. Shows that densification alone can improve GB conductivity by orders of magnitude, separating processing artifacts from true GB transport behavior.
Relevance to DENG.Group
Highly relevant to Cheng Peng's grain boundary studies. The finding that microstructural defects (pores, cracks) dominate GB resistance has major implications for which GB models are physically meaningful, and suggests that pristine-GB simulations may need to account for realistic defect populations.
12. Quasi-liquid grain boundary conductivity in solid electrolytes¶
Source: ChemRxiv (chemrxiv-2024-jrz0h) · 📅 2026-06-12 · ↗ Open paper
Reports that stoichiometry variation at grain boundaries can induce a quasi-liquid disordered state that facilitates anomalously high ion transport. This finding challenges the conventional view that GBs always impede ion conduction, identifying conditions under which they can become fast transport pathways.
Relevance to DENG.Group
Important for Cheng Peng's work — the quasi-liquid GB mechanism provides a new conceptual framework for understanding when and why grain boundaries may enhance rather than block ion transport. Could lead to design strategies for GB-engineered fast ion conductors.
Phase Field & Dendrite Simulation¶
13. Phase field simulation of dendrite growth in solid-state lithium batteries based on mechanical-thermo-electrochemical coupling¶
Source: arXiv:2509.02013 · 📅 2026-06-30 · ↗ Open paper
Develops a coupled mechanical-thermal-electrochemical phase field model for Li dendrite growth in solid-state batteries. Shows that higher temperature and greater external pressure significantly suppress dendrite growth, producing fewer side branches and more uniform deposition. Combined temperature-pressure effects promote lateral growth and denser Li deposits, though at the cost of increased mechanical instability at dendrite roots.
Relevance to DENG.Group
Directly relevant to Shoutong Jin's phase field dendrite work. The mechanical-thermal-electrochemical coupling framework is methodologically aligned with his approach, and the temperature/pressure parameter study provides concrete predictions that can be compared with his simulation results.
14. Phase Field Simulation for Dendrite Growth in Energy Storage: Methods and Applications¶
Source: Journal of The Electrochemical Society (1945-7111/adeb2e) · 📅 2026-06-25 · ↗ Open paper
A methodological review of phase-field approaches for simulating dendrite growth across different battery chemistries and architectures. Covers free energy functional design, boundary condition treatment, numerical implementation, and validation strategies. Discusses extensions to solid-state systems with chemo-mechanical coupling.
Relevance to DENG.Group
Useful methodological reference for Shoutong Jin. The review consolidates best practices for phase-field dendrite modeling and identifies current limitations in multi-physics coupling that his work can help address.
Sulfide Electrolytes & Reviews¶
15. Advances in sulfide solid-state electrolytes for lithium batteries¶
Source: Energy Storage Materials (S2405829725000194) · 📅 2026-06-15 · ↗ Open paper
Comprehensive review of sulfide SSEs covering structural families (glass-ceramic, argyrodite, LGPS-type), ionic conduction mechanisms, synthesis methods, and current challenges. Discusses air sensitivity, interface instability with Li metal, and processing requirements for practical ASSB cells.
Relevance to DENG.Group
Broad reference value for the group. While the group's primary focus is halide and polymer electrolytes, sulfide SSEs are an important comparison system and potential collaboration/cross-reference area, especially for interface studies.