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Highly stable ZnO varistor ceramics with steadily decreasing power loss have been put into applications in electrical and electronic systems for overvoltage protections, even with the absence of general understandings on their aging behaviors. In this paper, we investigated their aging nature via conducting comparative direct current (DC) aging experiments both in air and in nitrogen, during which variations of electrical properties and interface properties were measured and analyzed. Notably, continuously increasing power loss with severe electrical degradation was observed for the sample aged in nitrogen. The power loss transition was discovered to be closely related to the consumption of oxygen adsorption at the grain boundary (GB), which could, however, remain constant for the sample aged in air. The interface density of states (DOS) Ni, which is crucial for pinning the potential barrier, was proved to decrease in nitrogen, but keep stable in air. Therefore, it is concluded that the oxygen adsorption at the GB is significant for the stability of interface states, which further correlates to the long-term stability of modern stable ZnO varistor ceramics.


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Power loss transition of stable ZnO varistor ceramics: Role of oxygen adsorption on the stability of interface states at the grain boundary

Show Author's information Zhuolin ChengaRou LiaYiwei LongbJianying LiaShengtao LiaKangning Wua( )
State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Department of Thermal and Fluid Engineering, University of Twente, Enschede 7500AE, the Netherlands

Abstract

Highly stable ZnO varistor ceramics with steadily decreasing power loss have been put into applications in electrical and electronic systems for overvoltage protections, even with the absence of general understandings on their aging behaviors. In this paper, we investigated their aging nature via conducting comparative direct current (DC) aging experiments both in air and in nitrogen, during which variations of electrical properties and interface properties were measured and analyzed. Notably, continuously increasing power loss with severe electrical degradation was observed for the sample aged in nitrogen. The power loss transition was discovered to be closely related to the consumption of oxygen adsorption at the grain boundary (GB), which could, however, remain constant for the sample aged in air. The interface density of states (DOS) Ni, which is crucial for pinning the potential barrier, was proved to decrease in nitrogen, but keep stable in air. Therefore, it is concluded that the oxygen adsorption at the GB is significant for the stability of interface states, which further correlates to the long-term stability of modern stable ZnO varistor ceramics.

Keywords: oxygen adsorption, aging, power loss, ZnO varistor ceramics, interface states

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Publication history

Received: 02 January 2023
Revised: 11 February 2023
Accepted: 15 February 2023
Published: 04 May 2023
Issue date: May 2023

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© The Author(s) 2023.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51937008, 52107027, and 52207022), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2022M722513), and State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment (Nos. EIPE22113 and EIPE22310). Zhuolin Cheng would like to thank to Mr. Zongke Hou and Miss Chenyu Liang for their help on the experiment.

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