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Material World

Insulator

Electrical insulation is not the absence of a property but the presence of one — a band gap wide enough that no electrons are available to carry current at ordinary temperatures. What distinguishes the materials here is what else they have to survive: heat, ultraviolet light, moisture, mechanical load and, above all, the electric field itself.

Breakdown is the failure that matters, and it is a field strength rather than a voltage. Every insulator has a limit above which it conducts catastrophically and usually permanently, which is why high-voltage insulation is about shape and thickness as much as about material.

Each of these uses is established and cited on its own. Whether something counts as an ore, for instance, depends on grade, price and era — and those qualifications are shown alongside it.