Electrodynamic thermal breakdown of a capacitor insulator

A mechanism of the electrical breakdown is proposed for modern metal-field capacitors with the well-known property of self-healing of the breakdown strength. Upon an increase in the working voltage, the self-healing time increases to tens of microseconds, and the heating of adjacent insulator layers becomes significant. The propagating thermally activated conduction wave facilitates the enhancement of the electric field up to breakdown values. Analysis of the dynamics of electric field increase is carried out for capacitors based on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) dielectric.