Ceramics underpin technologies ranging from electronics and solid-state batteries to aerospace components, but the researchers note that traditional sintering at extreme temperatures causes severe elemental volatilization and degradation. Liquid-phase densification had long been considered a promising route around this problem, yet it had remained unrealized in practice.
The team, led by researchers including Qiuxia Feng and Weishen Yang, prepared fully dense proton-conducting ceramic films without applying external pressure. The material, a BZY electrolyte, was grown in a molten-salt system in which the surrounding liquid medium enables densification far below the temperature normally required for solid-state sintering.
Real-time monitoring of the growth process revealed the underlying mechanism as a sequence of distinct stages: melting, dissolution and reaction, followed by nucleation and growth. This stepwise picture explains how a film can consolidate and densify while its constituent ceramic itself remains far below its melting point.
The resulting films were compared with electrolytes made by conventional solid-state routes. Elemental analysis of the anode-supported films showed that the liquid-phase-grown electrolytes were compositionally uniform, in contrast to the volatilization-related problems associated with high-temperature processing.
Functional testing followed the materials work. In fuel-cell tests, the liquid-phase-grown electrolyte demonstrated gas-tightness and favourable electrochemical performance and stability in a protonic ceramic fuel cell, confirming that the densified film could serve as a working electrolyte rather than merely a laboratory curiosity.
The significance of the result lies in decoupling film densification from high-temperature solid-state sintering. Because the molten salt provides a liquid environment for transport and reaction, the ceramic can reach full density at a temperature hundreds of degrees lower than its melting point, avoiding the elemental losses that plague conventional processing.
Beyond proton-conducting electrolytes, the authors suggest the strategy opens opportunities for low-temperature ceramic fabrication more broadly and points toward on-demand ceramic synthesis, in which dense functional films could be designed and grown under far milder conditions than previously thought necessary.
The study, published on 29 October 2026 in Nature Synthesis, was a collaboration among researchers including Liming Zhang, Qiao Zhao, Xinjing Zhang, Zhongwei Cao, Hongbo Li, Wei Liu, Peng Zhang and Xuefeng Zhu, alongside Feng and Yang.
Subject of Research: Molten-salt-mediated liquid-phase growth of dense proton-conducting ceramic films at low temperature
Article Title: Liquid-phase growth of dense ceramic films
Article References: Feng, Q., Zhang, L., Zhao, Q., Zhang, X., Cao, Z., Li, H., Liu, W., Zhang, P., Zhu, X., & Yang, W. (2026). Liquid-phase growth of dense ceramic films. Nature Synthesis. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44160-026-01207-0
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1038/s44160-026-01207-0
Keywords: ceramics, molten salt, liquid-phase growth, proton-conducting electrolyte, fuel cells, sintering, thin films, materials synthesis, Nature Synthesis, low-temperature processing, Liquid-phase, growth
News Source: Bethany Barker. (October 29, 2026). Research report: Liquid-phase growth of dense ceramic films. Scienmag.
