Electrical trees in solids and streamers in liquids - structural analogies and differences

Deals with the comparison between prebreakdown phenomena in polymers and insulating liquids. Investigations of prebreakdown behavior in epoxy resin, cross-linked LDPE, mineral-oil and rape-seed-oils will be compared with respect to empirical similarities and differences. Though breakdown and propagation mechanisms of the respective structures differ strongly on a time-scale and underlying physical mechanism, similar structure shapes are observed in experiments. This raises the question, whether the chemico-physical conduction mechanisms show similarities. In this case, an integral modelling based on solid state quantum electronics for amorphous insulating material should be possible. A first evidence for this theory is the dielectric behavior of frozen mineral-oils at deep temperatures, when the oil is in a transition state between liquid and solid. Moreover remaining difficulties for the modelling and empirical differences will be discussed broadly based on experimental findings.