Materials, a key factor in the development of electrical equipment

摘要

The materials used in the electrical industry have played a key role in improving the performance of electrical equipment. In spite of a number of important technological breakthroughs, the pace of development has been essentially a steady oneinvolving a process of continual improvement in material characteristics. Traditional materials are unlikely to undergo dramatic changes in the near future. However, recent discoveries in the fields of high-temperature superconductors and conductivepolymers featuring ionic of electronic conduction are likely to result in a completely new range of materials for the generation, distribution and storage of electrical energy in the first few years of the next century.