A Simple Descriptor for Solid-State Ionic Conductors Across Chemistries

The discovery of new solid-state ionic conductors remains challenging because ion transport depends sensitively on both mobile-ion chemistry and the host crystal framework. Although atomistic calculations can evaluate migration barriers directly, simple descriptors can greatly facilitate screening large materials spaces and gaining mechanistic insight. However, existing descriptors often show limited transferability across mobile-ion chemistries and material classes. Here, we generate a diverse dataset of ion-migration barriers spanning Li-, Na-, K-, and Mg-ion conductors across oxides, sulfides, and halides, and use it to systematically benchmark descriptors. From this analysis, we devise distance contraction, ∆d, a simple local geometric descriptor that measures the largest contraction of mobile-ion-neighbor distances relative to their equilibrium values along a migration pathway. This quantity captures the dominant short-range repulsion penalty associated with ion migration and consistently distinguishes low- from high-barrier pathways across chemistries. Using ∆d in a high-throughput screening workflow, we recover many known fast-ion conductors and identify previously unexplored candidates, with fast-ion transport validated by nudged elastic band calculations and ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. Beyond screening, ∆d links diverse ion-transport mechanisms to a common physical quantity: The largest distance contraction experienced by the migrating ion.