Evaluation of field enforced antiferroelectric to ferroelectric phase transition dielectrics and relaxor ferroelectrics for pulse discharge capacitors

Discharge capacitors were designed based on materials with antiferroelectric (AFE) to ferroelectric (FE) field enforced transitions that had 10 times the capacitance of relaxor ferroelectric or state of the art BaTiO{sub 3} materials in the voltage range of interest. Nonlinear RLC circuit analysis was used to show that the AFE to FE materials have potentially more than 2 times the peak discharge current density capability of the BaTiO{sub 3} or lead magnesium niobate (PMN) based relaxor materials. Both lead lanthanum zirconium tin titanate (PLZST) AFE to FE field enforced phase transition materials and PMN based relaxor materials were fabricated and characterized for Sandia`s pulse discharge capacitor applications. An outstanding feature of the PLZST materials is that there are high field regimes where the dielectric constant increases substantially, by a factor of 20 or more, with applied field. Specifically, these materials have a low field dielectric constant of 1,000, but an effective dielectric constant of 23,000 in the electric field range corresponding to the FE to AFE transition during discharge. Lead magnesium niobate (PMN) based relaxor materials were also investigated in this project because of their high dielectric constants. While the PMN based ceramics had a low field dielectric constant of 25,000, at a field corresponding to half the charging voltage, approximately 13 kV/cm, the dielectric constant decreases to approximately 7,500.