Electrical ans structural investigation on liquid phase sintered ZnO-V2O5 varistor ceramic doped with MnO, Nb2O5, Cr2O3 and ZrO2

Abstract

Development of modern world depend significantly upon a continuously electric power supply. With growing demand, utilities must provide secure and reliable power delivery by providing protection to the electronic devices and electric power system from both lighting and switching surges. Interruption and failure within these system may result in not only damage to valuable equipment but also lead to considerable loss of revenue, particular to industrial consumers. ZnO varistors are among the key components in electronic devices and electric power system, essentially required to protect it from the lighting and switching surges. In the past few decades, ZnO based varistors have started to gain wide acceptance among power protection utilities worldwide as replacement from traditional SiC based varistors as it offer many advantages such as high non-linear coefficient, high breakdown field, high energy handling capacity, low leakage current density, and low maintenance cost due to gapless protection. Many investigation are carried out using bismuth and paraceodynium based ZnO varistor however there are limited systematic attempt has been made to study the vanadium based ZnO varistors.