DC Breakdown Performance of Polyethylene/Silicon Nitride Nanocomposites upon Non-isothermal Crystallization

For last decades, the topic of polymer nanocomposites have been widely studied in the scientific literature since the material system promises a substantial dielectric properties enhancement even at low nanoparticles loading. Nevertheless, factors contributing to increased or decreased DC breakdown strength of nanocomposites are far from understood. In this paper, an investigation on the DC breakdown strength of polyethylene nanocomposites that contained different amounts of silicon nitride with different non-isothermal crystallization processes is reported. The non-isothermal crystallization techniques were determined by fast, medium and slow cooling rate conditions by the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) for all the nanocomposite samples. The chemical structures of the nanocomposites were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and the morphology of the nanocomposites was determined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). From DC breakdown testing, the breakdown results of the nanocomposites were found to vary under different non-isothermal crystallization conditions.