CORONA CHARGING OF POLYMERS

A review of the corona charging of polymers is presented. After providing a brief account of the corona discharge process and of its application for charging materials, the paper focuses on the evolution of corona triodes that allow the sample surface potential to be monitored during-the charging process. Particular emphasis is given to the main contributions arising from research, basically on Teflon FEP and ferroelectric polymers, in which a constant-current corona triode was used. Such a triode system has become a powerful tool in the study of charge transport and ferroelectric properties of polymers, because keeping the charging current constant facilitates matching of the experimental results to a number of theoretical models.