HV Energy Store in Organic Composite Dielectrics for Compact Pulsed Power

With the aim of developing novel planar transmission lines that improve prospects for compact pulsed power, the ECE Department at the University of New Mexico (UNM) has played an important role in a collaborative research project with Sienna Technologies, Inc. supported by DoE. In future envisioned pulsed power-driven systems on mobile platforms it is well know that ceramic dielectrics with large iquest have great potential for decreasing the volume required for the system. Such ceramic dielectrics are also important for higher energy density capacitors. Unfortunately, ceramics with higher dielectric constant normally have lower breakdown strength (< 1.0 MV/cm) compared with organic materials or thermoplastic materials. In view of this, to achieve high energy densities (> 0.5 J/cm³) in dielectrics the present trend consists of casting in a mold a composite material composed of granulated ceramic embedded in an organic dielectric matrix. In an effort to accomplish this, Sienna Technologies has been responsible for fabrication of the ceramic composite samples while UNM has been performing pulsed breakdown characterization. In addition, another objective of this work is to investigate the behavior of the dielectric constant of the composite material as ceramic materials generally present a nonlinear dependence, i.e., epsiv varies as a function of the applied voltage. There has been a paucity of research on this nonlinear behavior for ceramic composites and it is necessary to understand the epsiv variation for two basic applications in pulsed power: linear & nonlinear transmission lines (NLTLs).