Flexible high-entropy functional ceramics

Lvye Dou; Bingbing Yang; Xiaoyuan Ye; Yang Zhang; Wenqing Zhu; Huiling Chen; Yingjie Jiang; Ben Fang; Shun Lan; Qian Li; Yiqian Liu; Penghui Li; Xuan Zhang; Shuchang Li; Yujun Zhang; Wei Xu; Xinyu Zhang; Liang Wu; Xiaoyan Li; Xiaoding Wei; Zhiyang Yu; Ce-Wen Nan; Yuan-Hua Lin

doi:10.1038/s41467-025-60548-0

Flexible high-entropy functional ceramics

Nat Commun. 2025 Jul 1;16(1):5915. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-60548-0.

Authors

Lvye Dou^#^{1

2}, Bingbing Yang^#^{1

3}, Xiaoyuan Ye^#⁴, Yang Zhang^{5

6}, Wenqing Zhu^{7

8}, Huiling Chen⁴, Yingjie Jiang⁷, Ben Fang⁷, Shun Lan¹, Qian Li¹, Yiqian Liu¹, Penghui Li^{9

10}, Xuan Zhang¹¹, Shuchang Li¹², Yujun Zhang¹³, Wei Xu¹³, Xinyu Zhang¹⁴, Liang Wu¹⁴, Xiaoyan Li¹², Xiaoding Wei^{15

16}, Zhiyang Yu¹⁷, Ce-Wen Nan¹, Yuan-Hua Lin¹⁸

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of New Ceramic Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Materials Physics Institute of Solid State Physics HFIPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Photocatalysis on Energy and Environment, College of Chemistry, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, China.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Physics and Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
⁶ Rowland Institute at Harvard, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁷ State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex System, Department of Mechanics and Engineering Science, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China.
⁸ Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
⁹ Center for High Pressure Science, State Key Laboratory of Metastable Materials Science and Technology, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, China.
¹⁰ Center for X-mechanics, School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
¹¹ Department of Advanced Manufacturing and Robotics, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China.
¹² Mechano-X Institute, Applied Mechanics Laboratory, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
¹³ Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
¹⁴ Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, China.
¹⁵ State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex System, Department of Mechanics and Engineering Science, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China. xdwei@pku.edu.cn.
¹⁶ Peking University Nanchang Innovation Institute, Nanchang, China. xdwei@pku.edu.cn.
¹⁷ State Key Laboratory of Photocatalysis on Energy and Environment, College of Chemistry, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, China. yuzyemlab@fzu.edu.cn.
¹⁸ State Key Laboratory of New Ceramic Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. linyh@tsinghua.edu.cn.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Functional ceramics, once integrated with flexibility, hold great promise for cutting-edge electronic devices. Unfortunately, functionality and flexibility are inherently exclusive in ceramics: the long-range order of ionic lattices bestows polarization-like properties that accompany brittleness, whereas disorder tolerates bond rotation to generate flexibility with significant loss of performance. Implanting ordered functional motifs within amorphous ceramics, though challenging, may balance this trade-off. Here, the challenge is met through a high-entropy strategy, which allows the initial crystallization of randomly dispersed nanocrystals followed by controlled amorphization of high-entropy compositions to attain a crystalline/amorphous microstructure, yielding a Bi₄Ti₃O₁₂-based film that can withstand ~180° folding with a bending strain and tensile elongation up to 4.80% and 5.29%, respectively. The crystalline/amorphous structure enables the production of a flexible dielectric capacitor with high permittivity (~35), good temperature stability and durability. This strategy offers research prototypes for customizing the microstructures of functional ceramics, advancing next-generation ceramics with flexibility.

Abstract

Grants and funding