Generative learning facilitated discovery of high-entropy ceramic dielectrics for capacitive energy storage.

Li, Wei; Shen, Zhong-Hui; Liu, Run-Lin; Chen, Xiao-Xiao; Guo, Meng-Fan; Guo, Jin-Ming; Hao, Hua; Shen, Yang et al. · Nat Commun · 2024

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Dielectric capacitors offer great potential for advanced electronics due to their high power densities, but their energy density still needs to be further improved. High-entropy strategy has emerged as an effective method for improving energy storage performance, however, discovering new high-entropy systems within a high-dimensional composition space is a daunting challenge for traditional trial-and-error experiments. Here, based on phase-field simulations and limited experimental data, we propose a generative learning approach to accelerate the discovery of high-entropy dielectrics in a practically infinite exploration space of over 10<sup>11</sup> combinations. By encoding-decoding latent space regularities to facilitate data sampling and forward inference, we employ inverse design to screen out the most promising combinations via a ranking strategy. Through only 5 sets of targeted experiments, we successfully obtain a Bi(Mg<sub>0.5</sub>Ti<sub>0.5</sub>)O<sub>3</sub>-based high-entropy dielectric film with a significantly improved energy density of 156 J cm<sup>-3</sup> at an electric field of 5104 kV cm<sup>-1</sup>, surpassing the pristine film by more than eight-fold. This work introduces an effective and innovative avenue for designing high-entropy dielectrics with drastically reduced experimental cycles, which could be also extended to expedite the design of other multicomponent material systems with desired properties.