Abstract

There is a strong incentive within the electrotechnical industry to obtain a deeper understanding of the physics of electric breakdown. In gases and crystalline solids reasonably well developed theories do exist today, whereas electric breakdown in liquids is less well understood.¹ This is due to the statistical nature of gas breakdown and the locking of molecules in crystalline solids, in both cases making powerful theories that can predict the behavior available. For liquids and amorphous solids such theories are lacking. Still, in many practical devices, e.g., high-voltage transformers, it is indeed liquids that are used as insulating material. Electric breakdown between two electrodes in a dielectric liquid is normally preceded by the formation of thin, weakly conducting plasma channels, so-called streamers. An improved understanding of the streamer formation could make it possible to synthesize dielectric liquids in which streamer formation is more difficult and in this way to obtain dielectric liquids with improved insulating properties. This could be of immense importance for the electrotechnical industry. Experimental information on streamer properties, their contents, their temperatures, their propagate ion, abd the electric field at their tip and inside them, is currently very limited.

© 1995 Optical Society of America