A Bilayer High-Temperature Dielectric Film with Superior Breakdown Strength and Energy Storage Density

Abstract The further electrification of various fields in production and daily life makes it a topic worthy of exploration to improve the performance of capacitors for a long time, including thin-film capacitors. The discharge energy density of thin-film capacitors that serves as one of the important types directly depends on electric field strength and the dielectric constant of the insulation material. However, it has long been a great challenge to improve the breakdown strength and dielectric constant simultaneously. Considering that boron nitride nanosheets (BNNS) possess superior insulation and thermal conductivity owing to wide band gap and 2-dimensional structure, a bilayer polymer film is prepared via coating BNNS by solution casting on surface of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) films. By revealing the bandgap and insulating behavior with UV absorption spectrum, leakage current, and finite element calculation, it is manifested that nanocoating contributes to enhance the bandgap of polymer films, thereby suppressing the charge injection by redirecting their transport from electrodes. Worthy to note that an ultrahigh breakdown field strength (~ 736 MV m−1), an excellent discharge energy density (~ 8.77 J cm−3) and a prominent charge–discharge efficiency (~ 96.51%) are achieved concurrently, which is ascribed to the contribution of BNNS ultrathin layer. In addition, the modified PET films also have superior comprehensive performance at high temperatures (~ 120 °C). The materials and methods here selected are easily accessible and facile, which are suitable for large-scale roll-to-roll process production, and are of certain significance to explore the methods about film modification suitable for commercial promotion.