Study of Charge Decay in Corona-charged Fibrous Electrets

In this work, a series of fibrous electrets was prepared by applying electrostatic charge onto a polypropylene nonwoven fabric using corona charging process. The charging process parameters were systematically varied and their effects on charge decay were examined. A double exponential function composed of two exponentials of very different characteristics explained the charge decay characteristics very well. It was hypothesized that two charges of different nature were present in corona-charged fibrous electrets. One of the charges could be ascribed to deposition of ions onto the electret surface and the other charge could be attributed to internal polarization caused by ionic displacement. The overall charge decay could be then explained by the quick decay of the surface charge in addition to the slow decay of the bulk charge. The slow-decay component was found to contribute more to the overall charge decay with respect to a change in applied voltage. With a decrease in applied voltage, the contribution of the slow-decay component was increased. The rate of quick-decay component as well as the rate of slow-decay component was found to increase with the increase in applied voltage. With respect to a change in charging time, the quick-decay and slow-decay components were found to contribute almost equally to the overall charge. This was also true with respect to a change in distance between electrodes, except at a very high distance. With an increase in charging time, the rate of quick-decay component as well as the rate of slow-decay component started decreasing till the minimum values were obtained and increased thereafter. A similar observation was made on the role of distance between electrodes in determining the rate of quick-decay as well as the rate of slow-decay components.