A review of ferroelectric materials for high power devices

Abstract

Compact autonomous ultrahigh power density energy storage and power generation devices that exploit the spontaneous polarization of ferroelectric materials are capable of producing hundreds of kilovolt voltages, multi-kiloampere currents, and megawatt power levels for brief interval of time. The storage life of these devices is four orders of magnitude longer than that for electrochemical batteries and electrochemical capacitors. Herein is an up to date survey of ferroelectric materials used for these high power devices. Several types of ferroelectric ceramics possess the ability to be depolarized under adiabatic compression and can be successfully used for high power applications. In addition to bulk ferroelectric ceramics, multilayer ferroelectric films are very efficient materials for high power systems. Of particular importance is the ability of relaxor ferroelectric single crystals to produce significantly higher electric charge density and energy density than ceramics, making them promising materials for high power applications. Also provided is a brief survey of recent developments of ferroelectric materials for high energy density and power density dielectric capacitors. Numerous ceramics have been developed, including antiferroelectric and relaxor antiferroelectric solid solutions, providing high energy density and efficiency simultaneously.