Ni_2−xCoxP nanocrystals with controlled composition were produced and demonstrated to show excellent activity toward the hydrogen evolution reaction.

Sufficiently high voltage applied between two metal electrodes, even in ultra high vacuum conditions, results in an inevitable discharge that lights up the entire gap, opening a conductive channel through the vacuum and parasitically consuming large amounts of energy. Despite many efforts to understand the processes that lead to this phenomenon, known as vacuum arc, there is still no consensus regarding the role of each electrode in the evolution of such a momentous process as lightning. Employing a high-speed camera, we capture the entire lightning process step-by-step with a nanosecond resolution and find which of the two electrodes holds the main responsibility for igniting the arc. The light that gradually expands from the positively charged electrode (anode), often is assumed to play the main role in the formation of a vacuum arc. However, both the nanosecond-resolution images of vacuum arc evolution and the corresponding theoretical calculations agree that the conductive channel between the electrodes is built in the form of cathodic plasma long before any significant activity develops in the anode. We show evidently that the anode illumination is weaker and plays a minor role in igniting and maintaining the conductive channel.

Research on sheath expansion is critical to the understanding of the dielectric recovery process in a vacuum interrupter after interruption of vacuum arcs. In this paper, we investigated how residual plasma affects breakdown in the sheath expansion period after the current zero. To simulate sheath expansion and breakdown, we developed a fully kinetic particle-in-cell Monte Carlo collision model with one spatial dimension and three velocity dimensions. The model accounted for various collisions, including ionization, excitation, elastic collisions, charge exchange, and momentum exchange, and we added an external circuit to the model to make the calculations self-consistent. The existence of metal vapor slowed the sheath expansion in the gap and caused high electric field formation in front of the cathode surface. The initial residual plasma, which was at sufficiently low density, seemed to have a limited impact on breakdown, and the metal vapor dominated the breakdown in this case. Additionally, the breakdown probability was sensitive to the initial plasma density if the value exceeded a specific threshold, and plasma at sufficiently high density could mean that breakdown would occur more easily. We found that if the simulation does not take the residual plasma into account, it could overestimate the critical value of the metal vapor density, which is always used to describe the boundary of breakdown after interruption of vacuum arcs. We discussed the breakdown mechanism in sheath expansion, and the breakdown is determined by a combination of metal vapor, residual plasma, and the electric field in front of the cathode surface.

Microparticles produced by high current vacuum arcs significantly reduce the insulation performance of vacuum interrupters. The objective of this paper is to observe the generation and dynamics of microparticles during the arcing and post-arcing period, and to further reveal the possible effects of particles during interruption of a high current vacuum arc. A plasma diagnosis system based on a laser-shadow technique was used to measure the particles in a demountable vacuum chamber. The results show that contact materials affect particle generation patterns. For a CuCr contact with a higher proportion of chromium, the formation of a melting pool is much more difficult and the flow of liquid metal on the surface can be suppressed, which also impedes the formation of particles. Moreover, reignition after arc extinction was found to be triggered by some incandescent particles. These hot particles have two effects on breakdown events during the post-arcing phase: they trigger a micro-discharge between a particle and the electrode, and new weak points are left on the surface that enhance the local field. More crucially, the lifetime of spontaneous particles spans up to hundreds of milliseconds after current zero, which indicates that long-delayed breakdown is correlated with the existence of particles. In addition, some particles could remain suspended near the electrode or oscillate between the contacts. The dynamic behavior of these particles can significantly lower the breakdown threshold and increase the possibility of breakdown.

The measurement of the metallic vapor density in a vacuum arc is crucial to acquire a better understanding of both the anodic activity and the dielectric recovery process in vacuum interrupters. The objective of this study was to measure the chromium vapor density and its axial distribution within the gap between the chromium contacts. Optical absorption spectroscopy (OAS) with a broadband light-source is adopted for this investigation. The results show that when the vacuum arc burns in the diffuse mode, the metallic vapor density maxima occur near the electrodes during the arcing period. At the peak current, the vapor density near the electrodes can be as high as 2.5 × 10 ¹⁸ m ⁻³ . With the decrease of the arc current, the metallic vapor density near the electrodes decreases as well, while the vapor density in the center of the gap remains nearly constant during the arcing period. At current zero, the metallic vapor in the gap has a nearly uniform distribution of about 3 × 10 ¹⁷ m ⁻³ . When the vacuum arc burns in the high-current mode, the metallic vapor density near the anode is lower than that in other areas until the vacuum arc becomes diffuse. Then, the evaporation process of the anodic molten region starts to play an important role and the metallic vapor density near the anode increases. At current zero, the metallic vapor has a density of about 4 × 10 ¹⁸ m ⁻³ near the anode, which is much higher than anywhere else. Because the metallic vapor density at current zero is too low to cause a Townsend avalanche, extra factors are needed for initiating the breakdown in the post-arc phase. These factors could include a residual plasma within the gap and the behavior of the liquid metal in the molten anodic region.

Anode melting and crater formation significantly affect interruption of high-current vacuum arcs. The primary objective of this paper is to theoretically investigate the mechanism of anode surface crater formation, caused by the combined effect of surface heating during the vacuum arc and pressure exerted on the molten surface by ions and electrons from the arc plasma. A model of fluid flow and heat transfer in the arc anode is developed and combined with a magnetohydrodynamics model of the vacuum arc plasma. Crater formation is observed in simulation for a peak arcing current higher than 15 kA on 40 mm diam. Cu electrodes spaced 10 mm apart. The flow of liquid metal starts after 4 or 5 ms of arcing, and the maximum velocities are 0.95 m/s and 1.39 m/s for 20 kA and 25 kA arcs, respectively. This flow redistributes thermal energy, and the maximum temperature of the anode surface does not remain in the center. Moreover, the condition for the liquid droplet formation on the anode surfaces is developed. The solidification process after current zero is also analyzed. The solidification time has been found to be more than 3 ms after 25 kA arcing. The long solidification time and sharp features on crater rims induce Taylor cone formation.