MXene-doped epoxy resin to suppress surface charge accumulation on insulators in a DC gas-insulated system

In an HVDC gas-insulated system, the surface of the insulator accumulates electric charges that distort the surface electric field and reduce the flashover voltage. Therefore, it is crucial to find a material that can effectively suppress the surface charge accumulation. In this work, MXene, a two-dimensional nanomaterial, is doped into an epoxy resin at different concentrations. By doping a small amount of MXene (30ppm), the resistivity of the composite is improved by about 4 times compared to pure epoxy resin. At the same time, the trap level of deep traps increases to 1.07 from 1.04 eV of pure epoxy. Measuring the surface potential of the insulator and using an inversion algorithm to calculate the surface charge establishes that a doping level of 30 ppm of MXene effectively suppresses the accumulation of the surface charge of the insulator, which is only about 1/3 of that of the pure epoxy resin. The surface flashover voltage is also increased by 10%. However, when the doping amount of MXene is increased to 100 or 150 ppm, the insulation performance is lowered. We used a potential barrier model to explain the effect of MXene doping in the epoxy resin. This work presents a possible way to suppress the charge accumulation on the surface of insulators in HVDC gas-insulated systems and provides a link between the microstructure and the macroscopic properties in the material.