Surface charging and flashover on insulators in vacuum

Investigations have been carried out on right cylindrical Teflon spacers in vacuum under dc stress to study the effect of cathode geometry on surface charging and flashover. Three cathode support arrangements were used. Type 1 involved a recess in the cathode into which the spacer was located, type 2 was a simple flat plate cathode, while type 3 had a raised insert on the cathode surface over which the spacer was located. In all cases the surface charge density and distribution is primarily dependent upon the magnitude of the electric stress. Using the type 1 arrangement inception for charge deposition was always ~10 kV even when the spacer had been subjected to repeated flashovers. At applied voltages higher than this the density of the charge, which was fairly uniformly distributed around the surface, was more or less proportional to the applied voltage. For the type 2 and type 3 arrangements, a distinct, uniformly distributed negative charge of ⩽20 μC/m² was always detected at low values of applied stress and at a fairly well-defined transition voltage this gave way to a distribution which was substantially uniform in the case of type 2 but quite filamentary in type 3, and both involved the deposition of positive charge