Suppression of Surface Charge Accumulation on Rough RTV Silicone Rubber

The room temperature vulcanized silicone rubber has been widely used in the electric transmission line. However, the accumulated surface charge leads to the flashover, and degradation limits its development. In this paper, room temperature vulcanized silicone rubbers with a rough surface are prepared via a polymer emulsion template method. The wettability, surface potential decay characteristics, and electrical traps distribution of the samples are investigated. The results show that the rough room temperature vulcanized silicone rubber presents a better hydrophobicity with the increases of the addition of nonsolvent. Besides, the rough room temperature vulcanized silicone rubber with higher addition of nonsolvent performs lower initial surface potential, and the surface potential on it decays faster. Additionally, the addition of the nonsolvent contributes to reducing the trap energy level of the room temperature vulcanized silicone rubber. The rough surface is beneficial to suppress the surface charge accumulation on the room temperature vulcanized silicone rubber.