2023-07-04 22:00:00
The concept of electrical insulation naturally relates to a function consisting in separating, in electrical or electronic circuits, conductors or components brought to different electrical potentials, whether in the very high voltage range or, on the contrary, very low voltages. The materials providing this function therefore oppose the passage of an electric current. They are called “insulators”. They can consist for example of gases, papers, oils or minerals such as micas. Many of them are porcelains, oxides or nitrides produced by ceramic technology or even glasses.
The material, in this insulation application, has no other function than to electrically insulate objects, conductive or not, brought to different electrical potentials. It may also be sought to exploit the dielectric properties associated with the insulation properties either for example when producing capacitors, or else to ensure the interconnection between various components brought together in an electronic device working at very high frequency.
This notion of electrical insulation can also be considered in a much broader way by including applications where the materials can be insulating or conducting depending on the temperature or the electrical voltage gradient applied to them.
Materials whose desired property is, for example, the magnetic characteristic or piezoelectricity, but which might not be exploited without them being, moreover, insulators will, finally, be mentioned.
A brief reminder at the beginning of the document helps to understand the fundamental differences between glass and ceramics:
glasses are materials that can be described as liquids whose very high viscosity at room temperature allows them to be likened to amorphous solids;
ceramics are materials with a crystalline structure, characterized by a microstructure formed by grains and grain boundaries.
The different electrical conduction mechanisms in the volume and on the surface of crystalline materials such as ceramics and amorphous materials such as glasses are then described. Finally, compositions allowing ceramics and glasses to be qualified as “insulating materials” are briefly presented.
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