Abstract
Contact electrification, or tribocharging, is pertinent to a broad range of industrial and natural processes involving dielectric materials. However, the basic mechanism by which charge is transferred between insulators is still unclear. Here, we use a simple apparatus that brings two macroscopic surfaces into repeated contact and measures the charge on the surfaces after each contact. We vary the temperature of the surfaces and find that increasing temperature leads to a decrease in the magnitude of charge transfer. When paired with a Monte Carlo simulation and thermogravimetric analysis measurements, our results support a mechanism where adsorbed surface water is crucial for charge exchange. Our setup is easily extendable to a variety of industrially relevant materials.
5 More- Received 10 May 2019
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.3.085603
©2019 American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Synopsis
Static Electricity Needs Water
Published 14 August 2019
Experiments pressing two materials together show that static electricity accumulates when surface water lets ions move from one surface to another.
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