Excellent Energy Storage Performance of Polymorphic Modulated Antiferroelectric Lead Zirconate Ceramic

Multiphase transition type antiferroelectric lead zirconate is one of the ideal candidate dielectrics for energy storage ceramic capacitors, it is challenging to fully reveal its formation and regulation mechanism, and further enhance the energy storage performance. Here, the essence of polymorphic modulation of multiphase transition antiferroelectric is proposed, and its non-ergodic relaxor phase transition nature is revealed. The polymorphic modulated antiferroelectric ceramics show a giant energy storage density of 23.73 J cm⁻³ and an excellent efficiency of 88%, which is much superior to the commensurate and incommensurate modulated antiferroelectric phases and other dielectric ceramics. The polymorphic modulated antiferroelectric ceramic is composed of both commensurate and incommensurate modulated ferrielectric like antiferroelectric sub-grain regions. Under an electric field, relaxor ferroelectric and ferroelectric phases are successively derived from the incommensurate and commensurate antiferroelectric regions, constituting two distinct non-ergodic relaxor ferroelectric states. The independent evolution of antiferroelectric short-range to ferroelectric short-range and ferroelectric long-range, and their interaction are the key to the excellent energy storage performance of polymorphic modulated antiferroelectric ceramics. The findings offer a novel insight into the field-induced phase transition in antiferroelectric, and promote the potential applications of pulse power antiferroelectric ceramic capacitors.