MANUFACTURABLE HIGH ENERGY DENSITY AT HIGH TEMPERATURE CAPACITORS

The development of high energy density at high temperature capacitors will provide a key enabling technology for applications of power conditioning, power inverters/converters, and pulsed power system at an elevated working temperature. Currently available power capacitors, however, suffers from low energy density at room temperature and even lower density at higher temperature, limiting their applications in a wide temperature range. This SBIR project will be devoted into the development of a novel class of high energy density, high temperature ceramic capacitors based on a new nanocomposite dielectric material with an aim of replacing the currently used dielectrics featured with low energy densities and poor high temperature performance. The proposed dielectric nanocomposite and the resultant capacitors can also be processed through a cost-effective and scalable fabrication technique. The technique will exhibit good compatibilities with the existing standard technologies, allowing for an attractive potentially low costs and high scalability. Phase I research will focus on the feasibility demonstration of the proposed capacitor technology, through material design, processing, prototyping, and characterization. In future Phase II, optimization will be carried out on both material design and processing. In addition, process scale-up will be conducted, and full-scale power capacitors with the targeted performance will be prototyped and tested. Promising properties of the developed capacitor system will be demonstrated to achieve high energy densities, wide temperature stability, low loss, and good reliability under harsh environments.