Development of New Electrode System for High Field Dielectric Properties Measurement Using Evaporated Polypropylene Thin Guard Film

Abstract

Non-polar polymers such as polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) are widely used as very important electrical insulating and dielectric materials. They are used in the increasingly high AC electric field strength region approaching to the limit of electrical breakdown strength of the materials. Therefore the study of high-field dielectric property is very important in terms of understanding the AC breakdown mechanism of materials. A three-terminals electrode system with a guard film (new type electrode system) was developed in our laboratory for the precise measurement of high-field tanδ, where the guard film was used to reduce the disturbance of electric field around the edge of a main electrode.However, minute air sometimes steals between a sample film and the guard film. The air sometimes generates partial discharge in the high electric field region. Therefore, when the sample had minute air, the new type electrode system was limited under 100kVrms/mm application that didn't reach to an intrinsic breakdown strength of the 30μm-thick sample. We tried to improve the new electrode system without minute air between a sample film and the guard film. We also tried to make very thin guard film to reduce the field disturbance at the edge of main electrode. In this paper a PP-guard film on a biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film was made by evaporation. This improvement of the electrode system using the evaporated PP-guard film was in success so that high-field dielectric properties of BOPP film could be measured up to near the intrinsic breakdown field of the sample.