Chinese team cuts laser weapon, EV part production time from 1 hour to 1 second

Chinese scientists have reduced the production time of dielectric energy storage capacitor components to just one second, enabling scalable, temperature-stable storage for hybrid electric vehicles, radar systems and high-power lasers.

Unlike other methods that can take from three minutes to an hour depending on the product quality, the team’s flash annealing technique heats and cools at a rate of 1,000 degrees Celsius per second, allowing for rapid synthesis of crystal films on a silicon wafer in a heartbeat.

Dielectric capacitors are electronic components that store energy by polarising dielectric material between two electrodes. These capacitors can release stored energy in an extremely short time to create an intense current.

The new capacitor devices made with these films have a high energy density, and this performance is maintained over a broad temperature range of up to 250 degrees Celsius (482 degrees Fahrenheit). Such energy density is comparable to the films produced using the 3,000-second method, and thermal stability to those using the hour-long method.

“This excellent thermal stability guarantees proper functioning of the device under extreme temperature conditions, including the hybrid electric vehicles (<140C) and the harsh environments of underground oil/gas exploration (<200C),” the team said in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances on November 14.

The team, led by researchers from the Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said their method was scalable and offered a viable industrial pathway to chip-integrated dielectric energy storage.

With the ability for rapid charge and discharge and high power density, dielectric capacitors show promise for applications such as electric vehicles, radar systems, high-power lasers and advanced electronics, the team wrote.

One potential application is developing directed energy weapons, which are ranged weapons that use concentrated energy like lasers to damage or destroy targets, according to research by members of the US Navy.

  

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