text: Lithium-containing NASICON-type crystals are described by the general formula , in which M stands for a metal or a metalloid (Ti, Zr, Hf, Sn, Ge), and display a complex three-dimensional network of corner-sharing  octahedra and phosphate tetrahedra. Lithium ions are hosted in voids in between, which can be subdivided into three kinds of sites:
  * Li(1) 6-fold coordinated sites at Wyckoff 6b position;
  * Li(2) sites at Wyckoff 18e position;
  * Li(3) sites at Wyckoff 36f position.   
  In order to promote lithium conductivity at sufficiently high rates, Li(1) sites should be fully occupied and Li(2) sites should be fully empty. Li(3) sites are located between Li(1) and Li(2) sites and are occupied only when large tetravalent cations are present in the structure, such as Zr, Hf, and Sn. If some Ge cations in the  (LGP) structure are partially replaced by Al cations, the LAGP material is obtained with the general formula . The single-phase NASICON structure is stable with x between 0.1 and 0.6; when this limit is exceeded, a solid solution is no more possible and secondary phases tend to be formed. Although Ge and Al cations have very similar ionic radii (0.53 Å for Ge vs. 0.535 Å for Al), cationic substitution leads to compositional disorder and promotes the incorporation of a larger amount of lithium ions to achieve electrical neutrality. Additional lithium ions can be incorporated in either Li(2) or Li(3) empty sites.
  In the available scientific literature, there is not a unique description of the sites available for lithium ions and of their atomic coordination, as well as of the sites directly involved during the conduction mechanism. For example, only two available sites, namely Li(1) and Li(2), are mentioned in some cases, while the Li(3) site is neither occupied nor involved in the conduction process. This results in the lack of unambiguous description of LAGP local crystal structure, especially concerning the arrangement of lithium ions and site occupancy when germanium is partially replaced by aluminium.
  LAGP displays a rhombohedral unit cell with a space group Rc.