Tailoring insulation surface conductivity for surface partial discharge mitigation

It is an urgent requirement to suppress surface partial discharge (PD) activities of dielectrics for modern electrical and electronic devices. Here, we introduce a method to mitigate the surface PD in a manner of tailoring insulation surface conductivity. A surface coating with a conductivity ranging from 10⁻¹³ to 10⁻¹⁰ S is developed to regulate the surface charge migration in the vicinity of the triple junction and to suppress effectively the surface PD activity. The excellent performance of this coating provides an approach for surface PD suppression at DC voltage, which has great application potential in the insulation design of DC electric power equipment, DC generators, power electronic devices, printed circuit board (PCB) layout, and various integrated electrostatic sensors and actuators.