Improving the surface flashover performance of epoxy resin by plasma treatment: a comparison of fluorination and silicon deposition under different modes

This work treats the Al2O3-ER sample surface using dielectric barrier discharge fluorination (DBDF), DBD silicon deposition (DBD-Si), atmospheric-pressure plasma jet fluorination (APPJ-F) and APPJ silicon deposition (APPJ-Si). By comparing the surface morphology, chemical components and electrical parameters, the diverse mechanisms of different plasma modification methods used to improve flashover performance are revealed. The results show that the flashover voltage of the DBDF samples is the largest (increased by 21.2% at most), while the APPJ-F method has the worst promotion effect. The flashover voltage of the APPJ-Si samples decreases sharply when treatment time exceeds 180 s, but the promotion effect outperforms the DBD-Si method during a short modified time. For the mechanism explanation, firstly, plasma fluorination improves the surface roughness and introduces shallow traps by etching the surface and grafting fluorine-containing groups, while plasma silicon deposition reduces the surface roughness and introduces a large number of shallow traps by coating SiO_x film. Furthermore, the reaction of the DBD method is more violent, while the homogeneity of the APPJ modification is better. These characteristics influence the effects of fluorination and silicon deposition. Finally, increasing the surface roughness and introducing shallow traps accelerates surface charge dissipation and inhibits flashover, but too many shallow traps greatly increase the dissipated rate and facilitate surface flashover instead