Zener tunneling in conductive graphite/epoxy composites: Dielectric breakdown aspects

Abstract

The electrical responses of conductive graphite/epoxy composites subjected to an applied electric field were investigated. The results showed that reversible dielectric breakdown can easily occur inside the composites even under low macroscopic field strengths. This is attributed to the Zener effect induced by an intense internal electric field. The dielectric breakdown can yield new conducting paths in the graphite/epoxy composites, thereby contributing to overall electrical conduction process

The search for enhanced dielectric strength of polymer‐based dielectrics: A focused review on polymer nanocomposites

“…Because their existence may form conducting‐insulating interfaces, the traps for electrical charges may become a good thing that delays the charge transport. [ 103,125–129 ] An extremely low concentration (0.005 wt%) of graphene in low‐density polyethylene (LDPE) rendered an excellent demonstration. Li et al [ 130 ] discovered that the minute loading of graphene resulted in lower dc conductivity of about 3 orders of magnitude and a higher breakdown strength of 12.8% as shown in Figure 8.…”

Tunneling-based charge percolation transport in a random network of semi-conductive nanoclusters embedded in a dielectric matrix

“…by a mean field description. Similar approaches are frequently used in the literature, either in the form of effective tunneling conductivities [17,18,21,24] or by introducing a mean field in a Fowler-Nordheim tunneling equation [25]. We have taken a different (slightly more detailed) approach in our computations by first assuming that, on the average, the electric field is identical in each NC shell, both in value and in its orientation (along the z-axis).…”

“…Percolating charge transport is itself a vast and well covered field of research [10][11][12]. Among the multiple aspects within its range, the charge percolation through quantum tunneling between neighbor nodes of the random network show peculiar behavior and recently attracted considerable interest in the specialized literature [3,4,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. The present research focuses on the charge tunneling percolation (TP) phenomena as the main transport mechanism in a random network of semi-conductive NCs embedded in a dielectric host matrix.…”

Improvement of polyimide/polysulfone composites filled with conductive carbon black as positive temperature coefficient materials

“…The PTC phenomenon was former explained by the tunneling effect. 4 From the literatures, various filler types have been applied in PTC systems, such as carbon nanotube (CNT), 5,6 graphene, 7,8 metal particles, 9 graphite, 10 and carbon black (CB). The value of electrical resistivity is low.…”