Microstructure and electrical properties of PbZrO3-Al2O3 nanocomposite films for energy storage by microwave annealing
WANG Zhanjie
CHEN Bing
LIN Yuxin
BAI Yu
Abstract：[Objective]For a long time,energy storage technology has received close attention in the academic and industrial fields.Compared to those made of other dielectric materials,dielectric capacitors using antiferroelectric materials exhibit higher energy storage densities and faster charge discharge rates.As a typical antiferroelectric material,PbZrO3(PZO)has a great potential in practical energy storage applications due to its unique field-induced phase transition behavior and high Curie temperature.[Methods]The energy storage performance of dielectric materials mainly depends on their polarization performance and electrical breakdown strength.To improve the energy storage density of the energy storage capacitor with PZO as the dielectric,a 3-nm-thick Al layer was deposited on the Pt(111)/Ti/SiO2/Si substrate by thermal evaporation,and a PZO amorphous film was deposited on the Al-coated substrate surface by the sol-gel method.Then,PbZrO3-Al2O3(PZO-AO)nanocomposite films were prepared by two processes of microwave annealing(MA)and conventional annealing(CA).[Results]The results show that a nanocomposite film can be prepared by the method of this study,in which the Al2O3 nanoparticles are distributed in layers on the PZO matrix.The shape of the ferroelectric hysteresis loop and polarization performance of the film can be adjusted.The energy storage density of the PZO-AO nanocomposite film prepared by CA(CA PZO-AO film)is 13.52 J/cm3 in the electric field of 950 kV/cm,which is 83％higher than that of the PZO film prepared by CA(CA PZO film).In addition,the experimental data show that MA can reduce the crystallization activation energy of the PZO film,which can not only make the amorphous PZO film crystallized at a low temperature of 650℃ but also shorten the annealing time to only one-third of CA time.Furthermore,MA can also stabilize the antiferroelectric properties of the PZO film,further improving the energy storage density of the film.Therefore,MA is used to further optimize the microstructure of the PZO-AO nanocomposite film,decrease the grain size of the film,and reduce the leakage current density.The leakage current density of the PZO-AO nanocomposite film prepared by MA(MA PZO-AO film)is in the orders of magnitude of about 10-8,which is 1 order of magnitude lower than that of the CA PZO-AO film.This indicates that the grain size of perovskite and the distribution of Al2O3 nanoparticles are regulated by MA,so as to improve the electrical breakdown strength.The MA PZO-AO film finally has an energy storage density of 18.94 J/cm3 in an electric field of 1 550 kV/cm,which is 40.1％higher than that of the CA PZO-AO film.[Conclusions]The experiment shows that high-quality dielectric nanocomposite films can be prepared by thermal evaporation combined with energy-saving and environmentally friendly MA technology.This research provides a new idea for the design of new energy storage capacitor materials by nanocomposite.
Keywords：lead zirconateAl2O3 nanoparticlenanocomposite filmsol-gel methodleakage current densityelectrical breakdown strengthenergy storage densitygrain size
Publication Date：2025-11-25
Online Publishing Date：2025-12-29(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：8( 759-766 )