Novel BaTiO3-based lead-free ceramic capacitors featuring high energy storage density, high power density, and excellent stability

Abstract

The development of energy storage devices with a high energy storage density, high power density, and excellent stability has always been a long-cherished goal for many researchers as they tackle issues concerning energy conservation and environmental protection. In this work, we report a novel BaTiO₃-based lead-free composition (0.85BaTiO₃–0.15Bi(Zn_1/2Sn_1/2)O₃) with an ultrahigh energy storage density (2.41 J cm⁻³) and a high energy storage efficiency of 91.6%, which is superior to other lead-free systems reported recently. The energy storage properties of 0.85BT–0.15BZS ceramic manifest excellent frequency stability (5–1000 Hz) and fatigue endurance (cycle number: 10⁵). The pulsed charging–discharging process is measured to elucidate the actual operation performance in the 0.85BT–0.15BZS ceramic. Delightfully, the 0.85BT–0.15BZS ceramic also possesses an ultrahigh current density of 551 A cm⁻² and a giant power density of 30.3 MW cm⁻³, and the stored energy is released in sub-microseconds. Moreover, the 0.85BT–0.15BZS ceramic exhibits outstanding temperature stability of its dielectric properties, energy storage properties, and charging–discharging performance over a broad temperature range (20–160 °C) due to the weakly-coupled relaxor behavior. These results not only indicate the superior potential of environment-friendly BaTiO₃-based relaxor ferroelectric ceramics for the design of ceramic capacitors of both high energy storage and power applications, but they also show the merit of the weakly-coupled relaxor behavior to improve the thermal stability of energy storage properties.