Recently, the Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society (DEIS) of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) selected 6 IEEE DEIS Graduate Fellowship winners this year worldwide, among which 4 students from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Applied Electronics (EEA) won the award, and will receive a scholarship of USD 5,000 each.

The IEEE DEIS Graduate Fellowship was established by the IEEE Dielectric and Electrical Insulation Society to provide assistance to graduate students worldwide in fields related to electrical insulation and dielectric environments. Research subjects for postgraduate students cover a wide range of fields including insulating media, dielectric properties and breakdown, charge transport, and high voltage effects, etc. The evaluation criteria for this award are mainly the innovativeness of the content of the postgraduate student’s project, the impact of the selected subject, and the ability of the postgraduate student to complete the goal during the award period. The winners of this award are selected by members of the DEIS Education Committee. In 2021, four doctoral students, Pei Jiayao, Wang Shaojie, Wang Tianyu, and Cheng Sang from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Applied Electronics of Tsinghua University won this honor.

Pei Jiayao’s award-winning project is “High Temperature Dielectric Loss Suppression Based on Electrode-Dielectric Interface Engineering”, and his instructor is Professor Dang Zhimin. Polymer dielectric material involves a serious loss under high temperature and high field, Pei Jiayao’s research subject aims to propose a high temperature dielectric loss suppression method based on electrode-dielectric interface engineering to improve the charge-discharge efficiency and breakdown strength of dielectric material.

Pei Jiayao

Wang Shaojie’s award-winning project is “Model Polymers Help to Recognize Interfaces in Nanodielectrics”, co-instructed by Professor He Jinliang and Associate Professor Li Qi. Interface is considered to be a key factor in improving the performance of nanodielectrics. This subject proposes a new strategy to study nanodielectric interfaces, which can capture the essential characteristics of nanodielectric interfaces, provide direct experimental evidence for interface structure and performance, construct a new nanodielectric interface model and guide the design of nanodielectrics.

Wang Shaojie

Wang Tianyu’s award-winning project is “Research on Directly Regulating Traps in Insulating Material to Inhibit Surface Charge Accumulation”, co-instructed by Professor Liang Xidong and Professor Zhang Guixin. The accumulation of charges on the surface of insulating material will lead to local electric field distortion, which will induce the occurrence of flashover along the surface, resulting in insulation failure and equipment damage, and the fundamental cause is polymer carrier traps. This subject has carried out in-depth research on traps in insulating material, proposed the idea of suppressing the accumulation of surface charges on insulators and increasing the flashover voltage along the surface by directly regulating the trap parameters of polymers, and given a material modification scheme for directly regulating the trap parameters, which can be applied in practical industries.

Wang Tianyu

Cheng Sang’s award-winning project is “A Surface-coated Polymer for High-performance High-temperature Dielectric Materials”, instructed by Associate Professor Li Qi. The emerging application scenarios of film capacitors require increasing the operating temperature of film capacitors. This subject deposits a nanometer-thick inorganic insulating layer on the surface of polymer dielectric to regulate the charge injection barrier at the electrode/dielectric interface, suppress charge injection, and reduce conduction loss, thereby greatly improving the high-temperature insulation properties. This method solves the problems of poor uniformity and low production efficiency of dielectric films caused by traditional nano-doping modification, and has a broad prospect for industrial application.

Cheng Sang