Water-Tree Resistability of UV-XLPE from Hydrophilicity of Auxiliary Crosslinkers

The water-resistant characteristics of ultraviolet crosslinked polyethylene (UV-XLPE) are investigated specially for the dependence on the hydrophilicities of auxiliary crosslinkers, which is significant to develop high-voltage insulating cable materials. As auxiliary crosslinking agents of polyethylene, triallyl isocyanurate (TAIC), trimethylolpropane trimethacrylate (TMPTMA), and N,N′-m-phenylenedimaleimide (HAV2) are individually adopted to prepared XLPE materials with the UV-initiation crosslinking technique, for the study of water-tree resistance through the accelerating aging experiments with water blade electrode. The stress–strain characteristics and dynamic viscoelastic properties of UV-XLPE are tested by the electronic tension machine and dynamic thermomechanical analyzer. Monte Carlo molecular simulation is used to calculate the interaction parameters and mixing energy of crosslinker/water binary systems to analyze the compatibility between water and crosslinker molecules. Water-tree experiments verify that XLPE-TAIC represents the highest ability to inhibit the growth of water-trees, while XLPE-HAV2 shows the lowest resistance to water-trees. The stress–strain and viscoelastic properties show that the concentration of molecular chains connecting the adjacent lamellae in amorphous phase of XLPE-HAV2 is significantly higher than that of XLPE-TAIC and XLPE-TMPTMA. The molecular simulation results demonstrate that TAIC/water and TMPTMA/water binary systems possess a higher hydrophilicity than that of HAV2/water, as manifested by their lower interaction parameters and mixing free energies. The auxiliary crosslinkers can not only increase the molecular density of amorphous polyethylene between lamellae to inhibit water-tree growth, but also prevent water molecules at insulation defects from agglomerating into micro-water beads by increasing the hydrophilicity of auxiliary crosslinkers, which will evidently reduce the damage of micro-water beads on the amorphous phase in UV-XLPE. The better compatibility of TAIC and water molecules is the dominant reason accounting for the excellent water resistance of XLPE-TAIC.