Electron beam in-situ ultrafast curing of loadable primer-free polydimethylsiloxane coatings for composite insulators

In-situ curing is a scalable industrial modification technique for composite insulators that can provide significant economic benefits by eliminating numerous curing steps. In this work, we developed an efficient, environmentally friendly, simple and substrate-free curing method, namely electron beam irradiation in-situ curing polydimethylsiloxane ( e -PDMS). The fabricated e- PDMS coating has excellent adhesion and is particularly impressive because of its ultrafast cure time of only 30 s. The coating has excellent thermomechanical properties with almost no thermal weight loss at 300 °C. Two common nanoparticles were individually cured on a silicone rubber surface and successfully made the surface superhydrophobic, heat-absorbing and passive cooling, respectively. The results illustrate that the e -PDMS method developed in this study can be effectively functionalized, verified its great potential for applications in the electrical industry, which can vastly facilitate the industrial application of advanced coatings.