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Local electric-field around multitype pores (dielectric pore, interface pore, electrode pore) in multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) was investigated using Kelvin probe force microscopy combined with the finite element simulation to understand the effect of pores on the electric reliability of MLCCs. Electric-field is found to be concentrated significantly in the vicinity of these pores and the strength of the local electric-field is 1.5–5.0 times of the nominal strength. Unexpectedly, the concentration degree of the pores in the inner electrode is much higher than that in the dielectrics and dielectric-electrode interfaces. Meanwhile, geometry orientations are found to have a remarkable influence on the local electric field strength. The pores act as an insulation degradation precursor via local electric, thermal center, and oxygen vacancies accumulation center. Such unusual local electric field concentration of multitype pores can provide new insights into the understanding of insulation degradation evolution, processing tailoring and design optimization for MLCCs.

Piezophotonics is a great interesting field of physics that has led to a number of important technologies, such as light source, smart sensors, and mechatronics. In this work, we reported Pr-doped (Bi0·5Na0.5)TiO3-based lead-free ceramics with strong red photoluminescence emission and large strain response (d33∗ = 460 pm/V, S = 0.32 %). The PL emission can be quenched by decreasing the intensity by 93 % after electrical polarization (E = 50 kV/cm). The local structure and electric field-induced structural changes were systematically investigated to reveal the significant distinction in photoluminescence properties caused by electrical polarization. The results indicated that polarization treatment eliminates the structural inhomogeneities and establishes a long-range ferroelectric tetragonal and rhombohedral distortion. The crystal structure transformed irreversibly from a non-ergodic to a normal ferroelectric state. PL quenching originated from the decreased distortion of octahedral due to the transition from a non-ergodic state to a highly ordered symmetrical structure. Meanwhile, the enlarged domain structure contributed to the photoluminescence quenching effect. Our findings demonstrate that an electric field can be a robust tool for adjusting the photoluminescence property and provide insights into the relationship between the structure and PL properties of BNT-based ceramics under an external stimulus.

Due to the extrinsic contribution of domain wall motions to electro-strains, the incompatibility of the large electro-strain with a low hysteresis in piezoelectric ceramics is a stumbling block for designing high-performance piezoelectrical actuators. Herein, we report a critical state in relaxor ferroelectric systems enables to enhance the electro-strain and to reduce the hysteresis simultaneously. A room temperature ergodic relaxor state dominated by nanodomains with different local symmetries can be obtained by introducing Bi(Zn1/2Ti1/2)TiO3 into 0.73 Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-0.27PbTiO3 matrix. Like the morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) in ferroelectrics, the coexistence of different local symmetries is capable of facilitating the transition from the ergodic relaxor state to the ferroelectric under the applied field due to the ease of polarization rotation, thereby leading to a giant electro-stain (0.24%) under an electric field of 50 kV/cm. Furthermore, the field-induced ferroelectric state with the long-range ferroelectric order can spontaneously reverse back to the initial ergodic relaxor state during unloading the electric field, which contributes to a low hysteresis (15.4%). The present work not only introduces a solid solution system with excellent electro-strain properties but also affords a guidance for manipulating the electro-strain behavior by modulating phase structures and domain configurations of piezoelectric ceramics.

To improve the static performance, dynamic performance, and current balance of a current-source PWM rectifier with multi-modules, a comprehensive control method with passivity-based control and current balance control is proposed in this paper. Current balance control, which is based on AC voltage sequencing, has the advantages of being easy to implement and not being limited by the number of modules. Mathematical modelling, controller design, and simulation verification were conducted successively, and the results show that the comprehensive control method has a low current impact and high power quality. At the same time, module currents are well balanced, even under external disturbance, when using current balance control.

Metal halide perovskites (MHPs) hold great potential in thermoelectric (TE) applications, thanks to their regular and soft lattice in nature. However, the poor electrical conductivity caused by low charge carrier density (1019 cm−3). However, further electrical doping remains challenging, originating from the limited capability of accommodating heterogeneous dopants and the heavy compensation in THPs. Herein, a novel diffusion‐mediated doping approach is demonstrated to prominently increase the p‐type doping level of THPs by a sequence of air exposure and 2,3,5,6‐tetrafluoro‐7,7,8,8‐tetracyanoquinodimethane (F4TCNQ) surface treatments. In paradigm photovoltaic THP materials—CH(NH2)2SnI3 (namely FASnI3), the electrical conductivity is dramatically increased by 300× from 0.06 to 18 S cm−1 in thin films, leading to a remarkable enhancement of power factor by 25× up to 53 μW m−1 K−2. In contrast, only a slight variation of thermal conductivity is observed after F4TCNQ deposition, which is in accordance with the increase in electrical conductivity, indicating that the lattice structures of FASnI3 remain intact after doping. This study paves an illuminating way to ameliorate TE properties in halide perovskites.

In 2019, 27 new 500 kV AC composite insulators showed a severe heating, different from the traditional heating failure reported in recent years, the heating area isn’t limited in the high voltage side and 3–5 discontinuous heating area appears in the middle part. It was named “Lantern-like” heating failure according to the shape of the heating area. With the withstand voltage test, absorption test, X ray micro-CT test and SEM analysis, The 3D structural imaging of the through channels in the rod has been achieved, which would change the electric field distribution significantly. Short internal through channels will change the electrical field distribution and provide the energy to the abnormally heating. To detect these potential channels which should be responsible for the abnormally heating in the rod, the test time of dye penetration test has been extended from 15 minutes to 2 hours, and the improved test methods can find the through channels easily but won’t alert for the normal ones.

To identify the DC bias state of transformers, a DC bias state identification method of transformer based on wavelet singular entropy is proposed in this paper. The vibration principle of transformers under DC bias has been analyzed. By combining continuous wavelet transform, singular value decomposition, and information entropy, the analysis method of wavelet singular entropy is proposed. The vibration signal of the transformer before and after DC bias is transformed by continuous wavelet transform, and then the wavelet time-frequency diagram is compared and analyzed. Furthermore, the DC bias state of the transformer is identified by wavelet singular entropy of vibration signal. The wavelet singular entropy under different states is in different numerical ranges, and the wavelet singular entropy of vibration signal under DC bias is significantly greater than that under no DC bias. The wavelet singular entropy effectively reflects the DC bias state of transformers. Then the proposed method is applied to a 500 kV transformer and a 220 kV transformer in the China Southern Power Grid. The results show that the proposed method can accurately and effectively identify the DC bias state of transformers.

By the field investigation of the metro system, it is found that there is relatively serious corrosion in the terminal of the metro line, and overvoltage protection device (OVPD) often operates when the metro system is in the valley level. In order to analyze the causes of these conditions and alleviate the related problems caused by high rail potential. In this paper, establish a simulation model of metro system by CDEGS software, and consider the influence of the track-to-track cross bond on rail potential. It is analyzed that the causes of high rail potential in the terminal of the metro line and high rail potential operating small number of trains in the metro line. And it is analyzed that the influence on the rail potential of metro line, the influence on OVPD outside the power supply section, the influence on the station grounding gird where the OVPD is, caused by OVPD operation. The results show that the rail potential can be reduced to some extent by setting the track-to-track cross bond. No traction power substation (TPS) in the terminal of the metro line increases the rail potential. When the braking train supplies power to the accelerating train outside the power supply section in the metro line, the rail potential of some part of the line increases. The OVPD operation increases the ground potential around the station grounding gird, and may lead to the continuous operation of other OVPD in the metro line.

For the benefit of knowing the method of insulator deicing using hot water, this paper investigated the physical aspects of propagation and the spatial temperature distribution of a hot water jet in the air. The numerical calculation model for the water jet flow field was established and validated, and the temperature spatial variation rule and influencing factors of the water jet were analyzed. The results indicate that the water column breaks as the distance increases. The numerical calculation results and the experimental results of the water jet flow field were approximated. As the distance increases, the mass entrainment rate of the water jet gradually increases, and the normalized axis velocity decreases approximately linearly. The jet temperature rises with the rise in the initial temperature of the hot water, and the rising rate decreases with the increase in distance. The temperature of the water jet falls as the jet distance increases. With the rise in the outlet pressure, the temperature of the water jet drops slightly. The influence of environmental wind speed on the water jet temperature is more significant than ambient temperature—the water jet temperature increases as the nozzle diameter increases. The thorough deicing efficiency is most outstanding when the hot water output temperature is around 86 °C and the jet pressure is ~3.5 MPa.

High-energy storage density, responsivity and efficiency, i.e. WR = 1.07 J/cm3, ξ = 119 J/(kV m2) and η = 92%, were simultaneously obtained in Mn-doped 0.62Bi0.5Na0.5TiO3-0.06BaTiO3-0.32(Sr0.7Bi0.2□0.1)TiO3 ergodic relaxor ceramics. Appropriate Mn doping was beneficial to enhance breakdown field strength. Moreover, temperature and different atmosphere-dependent impedance spectroscopy results indicated that oxygen vacancies were the conductivity mechanism for all samples. The valence state of Mn together with the conjugation between Mn ion and oxygen vacancies was confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectra and electric paramagnetic resonance. The above results indicate that quasi-hysteresis-free loops with high-energy storage performances can be obtained by the induced defect complex. IMPACT STATEMENT High-energy storage density WR = 1.07 J/cm3, responsivity ξ = 119 J/(kV m2) and efficiency η = 92% were simultaneously obtained in quasi-hysteresis-free ceramics by introducing defect complex.

This study analyses a gas insulated switchgear explosion accident caused by a failure of the circuit breaker (CB) in a thermal power plant, which resulted in the explosion of the CB and the burning of the potential transformer (PT). Through X-ray detection and disassemble examination of the damaged CB, it is found that the A-phase moveable contact was not opened completely. After analysing the voltage waveform obtained from the phasor measurement unit recorder system, it is speculated that this failure is caused by the process of repeated arc strike. For verification and further analysis, the fault process is simulated in the EMTP; the arc is properly modelled by an extended KEMA's equation-based model which is proposed in this study. The simulation results match well with the actual situation; the contact gap would be repeated breakdown because its breakdown voltage is reduced, and the very fast transient overvoltage (VFTO) would be generated in these repeated strike processes. Due to the steep front and high amplitude of VFTO, the insulation of the PT would be damaged and led to the occurrence of PT short-circuit fault. The current would increase rapidly and causes the CB to explode subsequently.

Increasing concern has been focused on the search for ecofriendly dielectric ceramics to meet the extensive demands of pulsed capacitors. Due to the advantages of high-energy storage density, efficiency, and excellent temperature stability, optimization of energy storage performance in dielectric ceramics has been a goal in the past decades. This review summarizes the recently reported progress in energy storage properties of typical perovskite-type lead-free ceramics. The advantages and shortcomings in the various kinds of ceramics are discussed. Finally, future prospects are presented to provide some guidelines for the exploration of new materials.

Insulator missing fault is a serious accident of high-voltage transmission lines, which can cause abnormal energy supply. Recently, a lot of vision-based methods are proposed for detecting an insulator missing fault in aerial images. However, these methods usually lack efficiency and robustness due to the effect of the complex background interferences in the aerial images. More importantly, most of these methods cannot address the insulator multi-fault detection. This paper proposes an unprecedented cascaded model to detect insulator multi-fault in the aerial images to solve the existing challenges. Firstly, a total of 764 images are adopted to create a novel insulator missing faults dataset ‘IMF-detection’. Secondly, a new network is proposed to locate the insulator string from the complex background. Then, the located region that contains the insulator string is set to be an RoI (region of interest) region. Finally, the YOLO-v3 tiny network is trained and then used to detect the insulator missing faults in the RoI region. Experimental results and analysis validate that the proposed method is more efficient and robust than some previous works. Most importantly, the average running time of the proposed method is about 30ms, which demonstrates that it has the potential to be adopted for the on-line detection of insulator missing faults.

In this work, we have studied the microstructures, nanodomains, polarization preservation behaviors, and electrical properties of BiFe0.95Mn0.05O3 (BFMO) multiferroic thin films, which have been epitaxially created on the substrates of SrRuO3, SrTiO3, and TiN-buffered (001)-oriented Si at different oxygen pressures via piezoresponse force microscopy and conductive atomic force microscopy. We found that the pure phase state, inhomogeneous piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) response, low leakage current with unidirectional diode-like properties, and orientation-dependent polarization reversal properties were found in BFMO thin films deposited at low oxygen pressure. Meanwhile, these films under high oxygen pressures resulted in impurities in the secondary phase in BFMO films, which caused a greater leakage that hindered the polarization preservation capability. Thus, this shows the important impact of the oxygen pressure on modulating the physical effects of BFMO films.