Commercial biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film capacitors have been widely applied in the fields of electrical and electronic engineering. However, due to the sharp increase in electrical conduction loss as the temperature rises, the energy storage performance of BOPP films seriously degrades at elevated temperatures. In this study, the grafting modification method is facile and suitable for large-scale industrial manufacturing and has been proposed to increase the high-temperature energy storage performance of commercial BOPP films for the first time. Specifically, acrylic acid (AA) as a polar organic molecular is used to graft onto the surface of commercial BOPP films by using ultraviolet irradiation (abbreviated as BOPP-AA). The results demonstrate that the AA grafting modification not only slightly increases the dielectric constant, but also significantly reduces the leakage current density at high-temperature, greatly improving the high-temperature energy storage performance. The modified BOPP-AA films display a discharged energy density of 1.32 J/cm ³ with an efficiency of >90% at 370 kV/mm and 125 °C, which is 474% higher than that of the pristine BOPP films. This work manifests that utilizing ultraviolet grafting modification is a very efficient way to improve the high-temperature energy storage performance of commercial BOPP films as well as provides a hitherto unexplored opportunity for large-scalable production applications.

Direct current (DC) electrical performances of crosslinked polyethylene (XLPE) have been evidently improved by developing graft modification technique with ultraviolet (UV) photon-initiation. Maleic anhydride (MAH) molecules with characteristic cyclic anhydride were successfully grafted to polyethylene molecules under UV irradiation, which can be efficiently realized in industrial cable production. The complying laws of electrical current varying with electric field and the Weibull statistics of dielectric breakdown strength at altered temperature for cable operation were analyzed to study the underlying mechanism of improving electrical insulation performances. Compared with pure XLPE, the appreciably decreased electrical conductivity and enhanced breakdown strength were achieved in XLPE-graft-MAH. The critical electric fields of the electrical conduction altering from ohm conductance to trap-limited mechanism significantly decrease with the increased testing temperature, which, however, can be remarkably raised by grafting MAH. At elevated temperatures, the dominant carrier transport mechanism of pure XLPE alters from Poole–Frenkel effect to Schottky injection, while and XLPE-graft-MAH materials persist in the electrical conductance dominated by Poole–Frenkel effect. The polar group of grafted MAH renders deep traps for charge carriers in XLPE-graft-MAH, and accordingly elevate the charge injection barrier and reduce charge mobility, resulting in the suppression of DC electrical conductance and the remarkable amelioration of insulation strength. The well agreement of experimental results with the quantum mechanics calculations suggests a prospective strategy of UV initiation for polar-molecule-grafting modification in the development of high-voltage DC cable materials.

Currently, in the modern power industry, it is still a great challenge to achieve high sensitivity and uninterrupted-online measurement of large current on the high voltage gridlines. At present, the fiber grating current sensors based on giant magnetostrictive material used in the modern power industry to achieve uninterrupted-online measurement of large currents on high voltage grid lines is a better method, but the sensitivity of this current sensor is relatively low, therefore, it is key to improve the sensitivity of this current sensor. Here we show a sensitivity-enhanced fiber grating current sensor based on giant magnetostrictive material (in the following, simply referred to as the sensitivity-enhanced fiber grating current sensor) that is able to achieve high sensitivity and uninterrupted-online measurement of large currents by means of pressurizing the giant magnetostrictive material. Sampling the power frequency sinusoidal alternating current signals with the amplitudes of 107, 157 and 262 A respectively, based on realistic factors, for the sensitivity-enhanced current sensor, the sensitivities, compared with that of the traditional fiber grating current sensor based on giant magnetostrictive material (in the following, simply referred to as the traditional fiber grating current sensor), were respectively enhanced by 268.96%, 135.72% and 71.57%. Thus the sensitivity-enhanced fiber grating current sensor allows us to solve the issue of high sensitivity and uninterrupted-online measurement of large currents that have been plaguing the power industry in a very simple and low-cost way.

To suppress space charge accumulation and improve direct current (DC) electrical properties of insulation materials, crosslinked polyethylene modified with 2-(4-benzoyl-3-hydroxyphenoxy) ethyl acrylate (XLPE/BHEA) containing polar functional groups was prepared by melt blending. The gel content, thermal elongation, tensile strength, elongation at break, elasticity modulus, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS) measurement results demonstrated that the BHEA could slightly enhance the crosslinking of polyethylene (PE) and affect the mechanical properties and crystallization of XLPE, and the BHEA molecule was not easy to precipitate from XLPE after the crosslinking process. XLPE modified with 3.0 phr (parts per hundreds by weight) BHEA could effectively suppress space charge accumulation, reduce DC conduction and improve DC breakdown strength of XLPE at a higher temperature. Deeper traps were introduced in XLPE/BHEA composites due to the polar functional groups in BHEA, which could raise the potential charge injection barrier and reduce the charge carrier number and mobility to suppress space charge accumulation and reduce the conduction current density.

Compared to cross-linked polyethylene, polypropylene has a thermoplastic property and the advantage of recycling. However, the poor impact resistance at low temperature and the corresponding space charge problem restrict the application of polypropylene with the extruded high voltage direct current (HVDC) cable. Sufficient introduction of the β form of the polypropylene crystal can significantly improve impact resistance at low temperatures. Although it has been widely applied in insulation engineering, the effect of β-crystal on the space charge characteristics of polypropylene has rarely been researched until now. In this paper, a rare earth nucleating agent of β-crystal is employed to modify the performance of polypropylene to investigate the effects of nucleating agent content on β-crystalline, mechanical relaxation, trap, and space charge characteristics of polypropylene. The results of differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) tests indicate that the relative content of β-crystal in modified polypropylene increases gradually with the increasing concentration of the nucleating agent, approaching 43.5% when the nucleating agent content has been raised to 0.2 wt %, suggesting appreciable efficiency of the nucleating agent utilized in our research. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is utilized to characterize the morphology of β-crystal spherulites, which illustrates that the β-spherulites are in bunchy shape, and the lamellar crystals are parallel to each other without an obvious boundary between them. The results of the space charge test demonstrate that the modified polypropylene can substantially suppress space charge accumulation, which is attributed to an increment of β-crystal content by adopting a rare earth nucleating agent. It is indicated from dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) measurements that the enhancement of β-crystalline in modified polypropylene can distinctly increase and decrease the β and α relaxation losses, respectively, which proves that the defects in β-crystal and amorphous regions are reduced and increased respectively. Thermally stimulated depolarization current tests further confirm that the number of traps caused by defects in the β-form of polypropylene crystal declines definitely, which dominantly accounts for the suppression of space charge accumulation.

Herein, a theoretical investigation on the reaction potential energy surface information of triallyl isocyanurate (TAIC) in the UV radiation cross-linking process of polyethylene is conducted at the B3LYP/6-311+G(d,p) level for the production of high voltage cable insulation materials.