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Multifaceted improvement of varistors by PVA for desired electrical properties

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Abstract

The effects of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) on the slurry, granules, green bodies, and sintered varistors were investigated. The results showed that PVA inclusion as a binder not only influenced the mechanical properties of the granules, but also significantly impacted on the dispersibility of the slurry, the microstructure's uniformity, the compactness, and the element doping homogeneity of the varistors. These effects greatly affected the electrical properties, including the non-linear characteristics and the energy withstand capability. The optimal PVA concentration was found to be 0.7 wt%, resulting in varistors with excellent electrical properties: breakdown voltage gradient of 247.7 V/mm, nonlinearity coefficient of 41.0, residual voltage ratio of 1.71 under an 8/20 μs impulse current of 5 kA, and 100% pass rate under 2 ms rectangular waveform impulses of 900 A.

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The authors declare that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the paper and its Supplementary Information files. Should any raw data files be needed in another format they are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support provided by the Shanghai Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 17ZR1410300).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Sciences, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China

    Xin Ren, LiYu Yang, Qi Cheng, Yu Ning, Li Gao, XiaoMan Liu, JunWei You, Zheng Yao & LiYi Shi

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Contributions

XR contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by LY Yang and QC. The first draft of the manuscript was written by LY. YN, LG, XL, JY, ZY and LS commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xin Ren.

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Ren, X., Yang, L., Cheng, Q. et al. Multifaceted improvement of varistors by PVA for desired electrical properties. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 35, 217 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-024-11949-2

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