Magncitor: Using the Magnetic Material with High Relative Permittivity for Capacitors to More Efficiently Store Energy

Renewable energy, including wind and solar energy, is event-based. Therefore, it is emerging to store energy and sustainably utilize renewable energy without limiting by events (weather), where both batteries and capacitors can be used. However, the batteries usually have a much higher energy density than capacitors since it stores the energy in chemical ways. The capacitors, which benefit from fast charging and discharging power, are limited by the energy density due to the low relative permittivity of dielectric material. A commercially available magnetic material based on manganese and zinc has an extremely high relative permittivity value of around 200,000, which is expected to be 20x times larger than the state-of-the-art dielectric material. Therefore, it should be possible to use a MnZn-based material as the dielectric material of capacitors to store electric energy with the increased energy density. However, there are no clear clues for why some of the magnetic material has such high relative permittivity value, and there is also no comprehensive research on how to efficiently utilize the high permittivity value. This project will aim at understanding and evaluating the high-permittivity value of magnetic material as well as investigating the possibility to demonstrate and prototype the novel supercapacitor “Magncitor”.