Antiferroelectric (AFE) ceramics exhibit significant potential for high-performance energy storage applications due to their distinctive field-induced AFE-ferroelectric (FE) phase transitions. However, the energy storage performance is often severely limited by the insufficient breakdown electric strength (BDS) caused by coarse-grained microstructures. In this work, x wt % Dy2O3-modified Pb0.95La0.02Ca0.03(Zr0.6Sn0.4)0.995O3 (PLCZS) AFE ceramics (Dx, x = 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6) were designed to enhance the BDS by utilizing the grain boundary effect. The BDS value increases from 580 kV·cm-1 to 750 kV·cm-1 as the Dy2O3 content is raised from 0 to 0.2 wt %. The D0.2 ceramic exhibits a recoverable energy density (Wrec) of 18.36 J·cm-3 and an energy storage efficiency (η) of 86.39%. Moreover, the D0.2 ceramic demonstrates outstanding cycling stability with variations in Wrec and η of less than 1.0% over 106 cycles at 500 kV·cm-1. It achieves a high discharge energy density (Wdis) of 14.32 J·cm-3 and an ultrafast discharge time (t0.9) of 36 ns under 650 kV·cm-1. This ceramic also obtains a high current density (CD) of 2624 A·cm-2 and a high power density (PD) of 879 MW·cm-3. These outstanding results not only confirm the efficacy of Dy2O3 doping in enhancing energy storage performance but also underscore the great promise of the modified PLCZS antiferroelectric ceramics for advanced pulsed power applications.
Ma et al. (2026) studied this question.