Eur. Phys. J. B (2018) 91: 61
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2017-80431-x

Regular Article

A percolation approach to study the high electric field effect on electrical conductivity of insulating polymer

¹ ECP3M Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Abdelhamid Ibn Badis, Mostaganem 27000, Algeria
² Electromagnetism and Guided Optic Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Abdelhamid Ibn Badis, Mostaganem 27000, Algeria
³ LAPLACE Laboratory University of Toulouse, UPS, Toulouse, France
⁴ Dipartimento Di Scienze Matematiche E Informatiche, Scienze Fisiche E Scienze Della Terra, University of Messina, 98166 Messina, Italy
⁵ Electrical Engineering Department, College of Engineering & Petroleum Kuwait University, Kuwait 13060, Kuwait

^a e-mail: nboukortt@unime.it

Received: 24 July 2017
Received in final form: 11 October 2017
Published online: 6 April 2018

Abstract

The effect of percolation threshold on the behaviour of electrical conductivity at high electric field of insulating polymers has been briefly investigated in literature. Sometimes the dead ends links are not taken into account in the study of the electric field effect on the electrical properties. In this work, we present a theoretical framework and Monte Carlo simulation of the behaviour of the electric conductivity at high electric field based on the percolation theory using the traps energies levels which are distributed according to distribution law (uniform, Gaussian, and power-law). When a solid insulating material is subjected to a high electric field, and during trapping mechanism the dead ends of traps affect with decreasing the electric conductivity according to the traps energies levels, the correlation length of the clusters, the length of the dead ends, and the concentration of the accessible positions for the electrons. A reasonably good agreement is obtained between simulation results and the theoretical framework.