Abstract
Increased electromagnetic contamination of the environment accompanied with the amplified miniaturization of electronic components underline the issue of the reliable operation of electronics. Reliability is of utmost importance in special applications such as medical instruments, nuclear installations, fusion experiments, etc., where larger magnetic fields occur during operation. Therefore, the interest for insulation components that consistently protect instrumentation from overvoltage is growing. This paper deals with the effects important for the stability of a gas surge arrester, the most commonly used low-voltage component for the overvoltage protection. The effect of the magnetic field on DC and the impulse breakdown of noble gases is investigated. For the theoretical interpretation of the obtained results, the spectrum of free electron gas was determined, which enabled the evaluation of a new expression for the first Townsend coefficient. The results obtained in that way were verified through comparison with theoretically calculated results. Experiments were carried out under well-controlled laboratory conditions.
Highlights
An increasing degree of miniaturization of electronic components and increased electromagnetic contamination of the environment result in an increase in interest for insulation components at the low-voltage level
The gas surge arrester is a two-electrode system of a homogeneous electric field insulated with noble gas at low pressure
The gas surge arrester works on the principle of the electric gas breakdown
Summary
An increasing degree of miniaturization of electronic components and increased electromagnetic contamination of the environment result in an increase in interest for insulation components at the low-voltage level (low-voltage protection components). The task of these components is to prevent the overvoltage to reach the protected element. The most commonly used low-voltage [1] overvoltage protection component is a gas surge arrester (known as a fuse with a noble gas in German literature) [2,3,4]. The gas surge arrester is a two-electrode system of a homogeneous electric field insulated with noble gas at low pressure. The gas surge arrester works on the principle of the electric gas breakdown
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