In this study, we introduce a Na β″-alumina composite thick film as a solid electrolyte, to reduce the resistance of electrolyte for a Na/S battery. An alumina/zirconia composite material was used to enhance the mechanical properties of the electrolyte. A solid electrolyte of about 40 μm thick was successfully fabricated through the conversion and tape-casting methods. In order to investigate the effect of the surface treatment process of the solid electrolyte on the battery performance, the electrolyte was polished by dry and wet processes, respectively, and then the Na/S batteries were prepared for analyzing the battery characteristics. The battery with the dry process performed much better than the battery made with the wet process. As a result, the battery manufactured by the dry process showed excellent performance. Therefore, it is confirmed that the surface treatment process of the solid electrolyte has an important effect on the battery capacity and coulombic efficiency, as well as the interface reaction.

Room temperature powder spray in vacuum process, so called Aerosol deposition (AD) is a room temperature (RT) process to fabricate thick and dense ceramic films, based on collision of solid ceramic particles. This technique can provide crack-free dense thin and thick films with thicknesses ranging from sub micrometer to several hundred micrometers with very fast deposition rates at RT. In addition, this technique is using solid particles to form the ceramic films at RT, thus there is few limitation of the substrate and easy to control the compositions of the films. In this article, we review the progress made in synthesis of piezoelectric thin/thick films, multi-layer structures, NTC thermistor thin/thick films, oxide electrode thin films for actuators or sensor applications by AD at Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS) during the last 4 years.