Petru NOTINGHER | Professor & Director Adjoint de l’IES; Institut d'Electronique et des Systèmes (IES), UMR 5214 Université de Montpellier / CNRS

Abstract: The tremendous downsizing desired for the next generations of electronic structures involves stress levels previously unheard of, requiring to tailor specific insulating technologies and materials. Setting up all-electric aircraft needs embedding more and more electrical power in aeronautics, requiring higher voltages, with considerable consequences on the insulators, considering the specific environment of aircrafts (low pressure, humidity, thermal gradient). Developing high voltage direct current networks, needed to collect energy from remote and off-shore farms and to reinforce interconnexions, lead to questioning the effects of high dc voltages on insulators. Above that, the environmental regulations push to reinvent manufacturing processes and products.

This talk comes at a time when insulating materials are increasingly mastered and when new possibilities of design (functionalization, nano-composites,) are being widely deployed. Higher constraints can be now imposed and approaching the intrinsic limits of insulators is sometimes at reach, but the challenges for the future are only increasing.  In this talk, I will describe the features and use of insulating materials in electronic and electrical engineering devices, with a focus on their current and potential applications. The presentation is aimed toward electrical and electronic engineers and students, who do not need a background in the field, and will provide an insight into the fundamentals of insulating materials, electrical properties and characterization, insulation design, reliability issues, limitations, recent advances, challenges ahead and potential solutions.

Bio: Petru Notingher was born in Romania, in 1971. He received an M. Sc. from the “Politehnica” University of Bucharest in 1995, the M.Sc. degree from Paul Sabatier University of Toulouse (France) in 1996, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Montpellier (France) in 2000, all in Electrical Engineering. After completing the Ph.D. degree, he worked as a Teaching and Research Assistant with the Universities of Montpellier and Toulouse. In 2003, he was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the University of Montpellier and promoted to Full Professor in 2012. Since 2003, he has been with the “Institut d’Electronique et des Systèmes” (University of Montpellier/CNRS), where he was the head of the “Energy Systems, Reliability and Radiation” research department between 2012 and 2020. He is currently the Deputy Director of the IES. His research concerns insulating materials, electric charge measurement and electrostatic phenomena. He has authored and co-authored 175 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings and several book chapters. He served as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications and IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation.