Dielectric high gradient insulator – Progress towards multilayer insulating structures

Abstract

High gradient insulators (HGI) consisting of ceramic and metallic alternating layer structure, have been shown to reduce surface breakdown occurrence in high voltage devices. Recently, the HGI's metal layers were replaced with high dielectric constant ceramics, creating dielectric high gradient insulators (DHGI) that were shown to outperform pure alumina analog. A 2-layer DHGI prototype manufactured by spark plasma sintering (SPS) demonstrated an increased surface breakdown field and fewer surface breakdowns during conditioning, compared to plain alumina. However, weak breakdowns at the opposite polarity were observed in the 2-layer structure. This study focuses on overcoming this issue by introducing a 3-layer design, with two high dielectric layers capping a plain alumina layer. Breakdown tests confirmed the elimination of weak breakdowns and improved dielectric strength, consistent with simulations predictions. Additionally, post-SPS air annealing was shown to be essential for removing adsorbed gases and recovering the high dielectric layers composition that changed during SPS. The annealed DHGIs were shown to reduce significantly the breakdown pulses during high-voltage conditioning. The 3-layer DHGI exhibited a 33.5 % higher breakdown field than plain alumina and a 13.5 % improvement over the 2-layer DHGI reported earlier.