Dielectric capacitors have become key components in electronic devices and pulse power systems due to their ultra-fast charge/discharge rates and exceptionally high power density. Capacitors are now frequently required to operate in environments exceeding 200 C, while most mainstream commercial film capacitors can only function below 105 C, far below the requirements of modern industrial development. Given these limitations, there is an urgent need to develop a new generation of dielectric energy storage capacitors that exhibit stable performance across a wide temperature range and high energy storage density.

To address this issue, Professor Liu Ming's team from the School of Microelectronics at Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU) and their collaborators abandoned traditional design strategies and applied metadielectrics to the design of high-temperature energy storage capacitors, achieving significant progress.

Guided by phase-field simulations, they conceptualized and fabricated a self-assembled metadielectric nanostructure using wide bandgap HfO₂ as the second phase and BaHf_0.17Ti_0.83O₃ relaxor ferroelectric as the matrix. Experimental results show that this metadielectric structure not only significantly enhances the film's breakdown field and improves its relaxor properties but also effectively suppresses leakage current at high temperatures and greatly reduces conduction losses. This advances the capacitor's operating temperature to 400 C, while achieving remarkable stability across a wide range of temperatures, from -150 C to 400 C.

At 400 C, the energy storage density of the capacitor reaches 85 J per cubic meter, with an energy storage efficiency exceeding 81 percent. Additionally, after one million charge/discharge cycles, the energy storage characteristic change rate is less than 2 percent, demonstrating excellent high-temperature energy storage performance.

These research findings were published in the internationally renowned journal Nature Communications under the title Metadielectrics for High-Temperature Energy Storage Capacitors. The primary author is Lu Rui, a PhD student at XJTU, while the corresponding authors are Professor Liu, Professor Ma Chunrui from XJTU's School of Materials Science and Engineering, and distinguished researcher Shen Zhonghui from Wuhan University of Technology.