There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Guided ionization waves: Theory and experiments

The triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is a new type of energy generator first demonstrated in 2012. TENGs have shown potential as power sources for electronic devices and as sensors for detecting mechanical and chemical stimuli. To date, studies on TENGs have focused primarily on optimizing the systems and circuit designs or exploring possible applications. Even though triboelectricity is highly related to the material properties, studies on materials and material designs have been relatively less investigated. This review article introduces recent progress in TENGs, by focusing on materials and material designs to improve the electrical output and sensing performance. This article discusses the current technological issues and the future challenges in materials for TENG. The development of materials for a technology that uses the movement of the human body to provide power has been reviewed by scientists in South Korea. A triboelectric nanogenerator converts mechanical energy into electricity by harnessing the fact that two surfaces rubbing against one another can become electrically charged. This is known as the triboelectric effect. One exciting use for these nanogenerators is in wearable electronics, where the motion of the body provides the power. Unyong Jeong and colleagues from Pohang University of Science and Technology have reviewed recent progress in material advances in the four main elements of a triboelectric nanogenerator: the charge-generating layer, the charge-trapping layer, the charge-collecting layer, and the charge-storage layer. These improvements all aim to increase the electrical output of such devices. Over the last decade, triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) has been verified to be an effective way of converting daily mechanical energy into electric power or detecting various stimuli in the external environment. To promote the material researches in TENG, we introduce recent progresses in materials and material designs to improve the power generation and sensing performance. Also, we discuss on the future challenges and suggest possible approaches to solve the challenges.

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Material aspects of triboelectric energy generation and sensors

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0963-0252/25/6/063001/pdf

Dynamics of near-surface electric discharges and mechanisms of their interaction with the airflow

This paper reviews the last twenty years of work concerning surface flashover of insulators in vacuum. It complements an earlier review paper [H.C. Miller, Flashover of Insulators in Vacuum, IEEE Trans. Electr .Insul., Vol. 28, pp. 512-527, 1993]. The surface flashover voltage of insulators in vacuum depends upon many parameters, such as material, geometry, surface finish, and attachments to electrodes, but also on the applied voltage waveform, duration, single pulse or repetitive, and on the process history of the insulator, operating environment, and previous applications of voltage. Suggestions are made for choosing the material, geometry, and processing when selecting an insulator for a particular application. Some specific techniques for improving the holdoff voltage of insulators are recommended.

Flashover of insulators in vacuum: the last twenty years

For identifying electron and hole traps in polymeric materials, we combine the isothermal relaxation current theory and surface potential decay together and present a model called isothermal surface potential decay (ISPD). A non-contact measurement setup is specially designed, which features that energy distribution of electron or hole-type traps can be discriminated with negative or positive corona charging, respectively. By measuring the ISPD characteristics of low-density polyethylene and polypropylene films, their trap distributions are obtained, revealing the different semi-crystalline morphology of these two materials. The results we obtained may imply the essentially distinct nature of electron/hole traps: inter-chain for electron-type traps and intra-chain for hole-type traps, which is in agreement with other researchers' molecular modeling results.

Identification of electron and hole trap based on isothermal surface potential decay model

During the field service of composite insulators, high temperature vulcanized (HTV) silicone rubber (SIR) material used for insulator’s sheath and sheds is gradually aging, and thus how to effectively evaluate its aging state has become an inevitable issue. In this paper, artificially corona-aged and naturally site-aged SIR materials are employed as samples, and their properties such as hydrophobicity, leakage current, trap density/energy level, surface microstructure and chemical composition are investigated for comparative study. With the increasing of corona aging intensity, the contact angle of SIR samples drops gradually and recovers more slowly. The hydrophobicity of site-aged insulators also declines, from HC1 for 2-year service to HC5 for 15-year service. The leakage current of corona-aged and site-aged samples both increase with aging, which indicates that aging induces the increase of surface conductivity of SIR material. The peak trap density of corona-aged and site-aged samples increases with the aging duration or service duration remarkably. The changes of these properties are attributed to the changes of micro-structures and compositions in the surface layer of SIR. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis results reflect that a hardened inorganic silica-like (SiO2) layer with many polar chemical groups and distributed micro-pores is formed on the surface of SIR material after corona aging. Because of this silica-like layer, the hydrophobicity decreases while surface conductivity and trap density of SIR material increases. Besides the traditional properties like hydrophobicity and surface conductivity, the trap density is expected to be a novel parameter for effective evaluation of aging state of HTV silicone rubber material.

Aging characterization of high temperature vulcanized silicone rubber housing material used for outdoor insulation

Oil-paper compound insulation has been widely used in power transformers for quite a long time because of its good performance. The paper insulation degrades under the combined stresses of thermal, electrical and chemical stresses during routine operations, resulting in the reduction of its degree of polymerization (DP) and hence its mechanical and electrical strength. Space charges in a dielectric material have a close relation to its electrical performance. Therefore, in this work, the effect of paper-aged states (with different DP values) on the space charge behavior in oil-impregnated paper insulation is investigated, and the pulsed electro-acoustic (PEA) method is used for the space charge distribution measurement. In order to achieve this purpose, new oil-impregnated paper samples are thermally-accelerated aged for different time interval to obtain different DP values, and then the residual oil in each sample is removed, and the Kraft paper samples are dried in a vacuum dry oven. After that, all paper samples are impregnated with new oil, and PEA measurements are performed at room temperature. The experimental results show that, when the external dc voltage is applied on the oil-paper sample, homo-charge injection occurs for all samples. The samples with different aging states exhibit quite different space charge characteristics for both voltage-on and voltage-off conditions. When the aged states are worse, for voltage-on condition, more charges are induced at cathode and anode, as well as more space charges are accumulated in the bulk. For voltage-off condition, the space charge decay rate shows no obvious change for different aged samples.

Effects of paper-aged state on space charge characteristics in oil-impregnated paper insulation

Surface discharge on dielectric materials seriously restricts the performance of many electrical and electronic systems. Based on Pockels electro-optic effect, the surface discharge on polymeric insulating materials has been investigated under HVAC in Atmospheric Air. Different polymer materials such as polyimide (PI), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) films are employed. One single cycle of sinusoidal HVAC with peak value of 5 kV and duration time of 50ms is applied on a needle-plate electrode configuration and the applied voltage starts from the positive or negative half-cycle, respectively. During the development process of surface discharge on different materials, the dynamic observation of surface charge distribution is recorded in a cycle by a high speed camera. The experimental results show that there is significant voltage polarity effect observed, and the radius of negative charge distribution is smaller than that of positive charges. The positive charge density on PET and PI is lower than that on PVDF, which are closely related to the enhancement of electric field by permittivity and thickness of polymer films. Moreover, PI, PET and PVDF samples behave different surface charge distribution. Positive streamer channels on PI and PET are gradually growing into a snake-like pattern with voltage applying, and positive streamers on PVDF develop instantaneously and exhibit as a regular spoke-like pattern. The influence factors on different discharge patterns are discussed in the paper.

Investigation of surface discharges on different polymeric materials under HVAC in atmospheric air

Flashover across a solid surface in vacuum greatly restricts the insulation capability of pulsed power devices and impedes its overall performance. For more than half a century of painstaking research, there are still some ill-defined aspects that need to be studied. This paper, organized in chronological order, briefly reviews the milestones of research progress regarding surface flashover in vacuum. The main influential factors on flashover are analyzed, which are generalized into three aspects, i.e., electrode-dielectric interface, dielectric surface and external factors. The mainstream theories on flashover are discussed. In recent decades, the approach to improve surface insulation performance are summarized, including surface modification techniques, new insulating materials and new insulation structures. It is hoped that this paper will provide a guide for future related scientific research, engineering design and application.

Hai-Bao Mu

Papers

Identification of electron and hole trap based on isothermal surface potential decay model

Aging characterization of high temperature vulcanized silicone rubber housing material used for outdoor insulation

Effects of paper-aged state on space charge characteristics in oil-impregnated paper insulation

Investigation of surface discharges on different polymeric materials under HVAC in atmospheric air

Pulsed flashover across a solid dielectric in vacuum