Journal of the American Ceramic Society, Vol.100, No.6, 2382-2386, 2017
Electric field tunable thermal stability of energy storage properties of PLZST antiferroelectric ceramics
The electrical hysteresis behaviors and energy storage performance of Pb0.97La0.02(Zr0.58Sn0.335Ti0.085)O-3 antiferroelectric (AFE) ceramics were studied under the combined effects of electric field and temperature. It was observed that the temperature dependence of recoverable energy density (W-re) of AFE ceramics depends critically on the applied electric field. While W-re at lower electric fields (<8kV/mm) shows increasing tendency with increasing temperature from 20 degrees C to 100 degrees C, W-re at higher electric fields (>8kV/mm) demonstrates decreasing dependence. There exists an appropriate electric field (8kV/mm) under which the AFE ceramics exhibit nearly temperature-independent W-re (the variation is less than 0.5% per 10 degrees C). The underlying physical principles were also discussed in this study. These results indicate that the temperature dependence of W-re of AFE materials can be tuned through selecting appropriate electric fields and provide an avenue to obtain thermal stable energy storage capacitors, which should be of great interest to modern energy storage community.