Recent advances in dielectric breakdown theory of solid insulators

The phenomenon of dielectric breakdown in solid insulators has wide practical uses. Severaltheories, such as the well-known impact-ionization theory, avalanche theory and charge traptheory, have been proposed for this phenomenon. These are great achievements in such a well-recognized complicated subject. However, at present there exists no integrated and complete theo-ry to really reflect the overall process of dielectric breakdown, which obviously can be attributedto the complexity of the problem itself. All the existing breakdown mechanisms mainly focus on