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www.theregister.com/2025/01/30: A good kind of disorder: Boffins boost capacitor tech by disturbing dipoles

The team made changes to a material group called antiferroelectrics – used in capacitors – in which layers of pairs of positive and negative charges are aligned in one direction alternate with layers in which such dipoles align in the opposite direction. The researchers prepared materials which deliberately disrupt this pattern by including areas of dielectrics – materials with high resistance used in capacitors – which do not exhibit this kind of dipole behavior.

"Overall, capacitors made using this composite material had a greater charge–discharge efficiency and breakdown strength than did devices made using unengineered lead zirconate [a material commonly used in capacitors]," said Piush Behera and Suraj Cheema of MIT in an accompanying article.

The result was an increase in the number of charge–discharge cycles that occur before breakdown. The maximum energy density was also enhanced compared to unengineered lead zirconate
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"As on-chip capacitor applications continue to advance, frustration-modulated high-performance antiferroelectrics materials can potentially be promising candidates for multilayer, large-scale and three-dimensional capacitors," the study said.

More than you want to know about frustration-modulated high-performance antiferroelectrics materials.