Thermally stimulated discharge currents in polyacrylic acid polymer films

Abstract

Polyacrylic acid polymer films of thickness 15 μm were grown by the solution growth technique. Thermally stimulated discharge currents (TSDC) were studied on these polymer films as a function of polarizing field strength and polarizing temperature at a constant heating rate of 0.08 K s−1. In all these studies, one TSDC peak was observed and the temperature corresponding to this peak was found to shift to higher temperatures as the polarizing temperature increases. But for a given polarizing temperature, the temperature corresponding to the peak was independent of the polarizing field strength. The activation energies and relaxation parameters were evaluated. The origin of TSDC was attributed to the dipolar orientation process.