The tracking and erosion performance of silicone rubber incorporated with novel TiO2@SiO2 core-shell nano fillers under the IEC 60587 standard

Abstract

In last two decades a promising performance improvement in the electrical insulation materials has been reported by many researchers using different nano fillers (NFs). In recent years another type of NFs called core-shell type nano fillers have shown even more attention than ordinary NFs. The core-shell NFs are a combination of nano particle core coated with outer nano layer of different material. The core-shell NFs combine the beneficial properties of two material with in one NF. Recently a few studies have reported a considerable improvement in the dielectric properties of epoxy by utilising TiO2@SiO2 core-shell NFs. The TiO2@SiO2 particles have a core of TiO2 coated with an out layer of SiO2 at nano level. This study investigates the improvement in tracking performance of silicone rubber (SiR) using TiO2@SiO2 core-shell nano particles which has not been reported previously. The tracking immunity of low (below 1%) and high (above 1%) filler concentrations of nano TiO2@SiO2 incorporated into SiR was investigated according to IEC 60587. The results showed that an optimum percentage of 0.6 wt% of TiO2@SiO2 imparts best immunity to silicone rubber against tracking.