Abstract
Triboelectric charging of insulators, also known as contact charging in which electrical charges develop on surfaces upon contact, is a significant problem that is especially critical for various industries such as polymers, pharmaceuticals, electronics, and space. Several methods of tribocharge mitigation exist in practice; however, none can reach the practicality of using light in the process. Here we show a light-controlled manipulation of triboelectric charges on common polymers, in which the tribocharges are mitigated upon illumination with appropriate wavelengths of light in presence of a mediator organic dye. Our method provides spatial and temporal control of mitigation of static charges on common polymer surfaces by a mechanism that involves photoexcitation of organic dyes, which also allows additional control using wavelength. This control over charge mitigation provides a way to manipulate macroscopic objects by tribocharging followed by light-controlled discharging.
Highlights
Triboelectric charging of insulators, known as contact charging in which electrical charges develop on surfaces upon contact, is a significant problem that is especially critical for various industries such as polymers, pharmaceuticals, electronics, and space
We chose 3-(2-Benzothiazolyl)-7-(diethylamino)coumarin, a fluorescent dye with a broad ultraviolet (UV) absorption band and absorbance maximum at 427 nm, to dope some of our PDMS pieces (1 cm × 1 cm × 0.5 cm, PDMS, Sylgard 184, Dow Corning, for details on preparation and doping of the pieces, see Methods), which can be molded in polystyrene dishes to provide a decent flat surface for an analysis of typical tribocharging and tribocharge decay on polymer surfaces[12,27]
We should emphasize that the mechanism of light induced discharging does not involve a light-induced increase in conductivity, as proven by the surface resistivity measurements of the PDMS12 pieces doped with the Coumarin 6 (C6) dye
Summary
Triboelectric charging of insulators, known as contact charging in which electrical charges develop on surfaces upon contact, is a significant problem that is especially critical for various industries such as polymers, pharmaceuticals, electronics, and space. We recently developed a charge mitigation methodology[12] based on the latest findings on the mechanism of charge formation, which suggests that, upon contact, mechanically initiated bond-breakages produce ions[17] (the tribocharges responsible for the accumulated electrical potential) and radicals[18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26], which play a major role in electrification[12,26] In this new method, charge mitigation is possible through chemical removal of the formed radicals. To create a “switch”, we use organic dyes that are “placed” in vicinity of the mechanochemically formed species (i.e., radicals, anions, and cations) This provides a temporal (when the discharging is desired) and spatial (on desired loci on polymer samples) control of tribocharging on polymer surfaces, in addition to control with the wavelength of the light stimulus as described below
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