Abstract
The doping effect of graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) on electrical insulation properties of polyethylene (PE) was studied by combining experimental and theoretical methods. The electric conduction properties and trap characteristics were tested for pure PE and PE/GNPs composites by using a direct measurement method and a thermal stimulated current (TSC) method. It was found that doping smaller GNPs is more beneficial to decrease the conductivity of PE/GNPs. The PE/GNPs composite with smaller size GNPs mainly introduces deep energy traps, while with increasing GNPs size, besides deep energy traps, shallow energy traps are also introduced. These results were also confirmed by density functional theory (DFT) and the non-equilibrium Green’s function (NEGF) method calculations. Therefore, doping small size GNPs is favorable for trapping charge carriers and enhancing insulation ability, which is suggested as an effective strategy in exploring powerful insulation materials.
Highlights
Since the 1950s, polyethylene (PE) has been the focused insulation material due to its outstanding electrical insulation property, excellent chemical stability, good processing formation performance, as well as efficient economic benefits
We found that graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) are another good candidate for doping PE which can lower the conductivity of the PE/GNPs composite
The conduction properties and trap characteristics were tested for pure PE and PE/GNPs composites firstly by using a direct measurement method and a thermal stimulated current (TSC) method
Summary
Since the 1950s, polyethylene (PE) has been the focused insulation material due to its outstanding electrical insulation property, excellent chemical stability, good processing formation performance, as well as efficient economic benefits. Many experimental works have found that doping of alien fillers could greatly improve the dielectric properties of PE composite and maintain high thermal endurance [14,15,16,17,18,19] Fleming and his coworkers found that the conductivity of PE matrix composite containing 10 wt % TiO2 decreased by. Righi et al studied the electronic structure of the PE surface by considering an orthorhombic crystalline PE slab and the electron affinity was calculated to be0.10 and0.17 eV for the (001) and (110) surface, respectively [28] Huzayyin and his coworkers used density functional theory (DFT) to study the effect of various chemical impurities in PE on the electronic structures, trap depths, electron densities, and inter-chain interactions. The theoretical analysis qualitatively correlates well with the results from the experiment
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