A study of nanosecond arcsurface flashover in metallized polymer films

Nanosecond microgap surface flashover in metalized capacitor polymer films at atmospheric air is investigated. The range of microgap is 10-1000 μm. Surface breakdown occurs between aluminum or zinc 10-20 nm thickness electrodes evaporated onto 10 μm polymer films (polypropylene, polyethylene terephthalate). The special method is used to obtain the gap size of 10-50 μm. For larger gaps the commercial capacitor segmented metallized film is used. The experimental voltage and current are measured using 2 GS/s digital oscilloscope and used for breakdown channel resistance calculation. Experimental data are analyzed on the base of known theoretical and empirical equations (Toepler, Rompe and Weizel, Vlastos, Goncharenko and others). It is shown that in the nanosecond time range Rompe and Weizel arc resistance equation is in the good agreement with experimental results.