A Study on the Electrical Strength of Insulating Materials for High-Tc Superconducting Devices

According to the trend for electric power equipment of high capacity and reduction of its size, the needs for the new high performance electric equipments become more and more important. On of the possible solution is high temperature superconducting (HTS) power application. Following the successful development of practical HTS wires, there have been renewed activities in developing superconducting power equipment. HTS equipments have to be operated in a coolant such as liquid nitrogen ($LN_2$) or cooled by conduction-cooling method such as using Gifford-McMahon (G-M) cryocooler to maintain the temperature below critical level. In this paper, the dielectric strength of some insulating materials, such as unfilled epoxy, filled epoxy, and polyimide in $LN_2$ was analyzed. Epoxy is a good insulating material but fragile at cryogenic temperature. The filled epoxy composite not only compensates for this fragile property but enhances its dielectric strength.