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Journal of Applied Physics
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Electrical conduction in polyimide films

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Abstract

Electrical conduction phenomena in polyimide (Kapton) films were studied with particular attention devoted to the separation of interface and bulk phenomena. The measurements were carried out with a variety of methods in the temperature range of 50 to 270 °C at electrical fields of 104 to 6×105 V/cm and at time intervals of up to 2×10 4 s after voltage application. Biased, two-side metallized samples yield, after sufficiently long voltage application, interface-controlled steady-state currents described by Schottky injection, modified by space-charge layers in the vicinity of the electrodes. The effective work function for aluminum-polyimide is estimated to be 1.7 eV in the temperature range between 100 and 270 °C. A distinct dependence of these currents on electrode material is observed. Bulk phenomena were studied on one-side metallized samples subject to positive-corona charge injection. At temperatures below 200°C, significantly larger currents than those for biased, two-side metallized samples were observed. The current-voltage characteristics are ohmic at low fields and space-charge limited at high fields. From these data, trap modulated mobilities for positive carriers of 4×10-12 cm 2/V s at 50 °C and 10-9 cm2/V s at 200 °C, ohmic bulk conductivities of 10-16 (Ω cm)-1 at 100 °C and 10 -14 (Ω cm)-1 at 200 °C and an intrinsic carrier density of 5×1013 cm-3 independent of temperature are obtained. Activation energies for the mobility are between 0.2 and 0.8 eV for the temperature range between 50 and 200 °C.

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Journal of Applied Physics

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