Electrical conduction in polyimide films

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 2×104 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 cm2/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.