Experimental study and numerical estimation of moisture effect on charge transport in polymer nanocomposites

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Polymer nanocomposites as dielectrics have attracted a wide range of research interests due to their improved performance. One of the observed characteristics of polymer nanocomposites is the suppression on space charge injection and accumulation and the charge transport mechanism behind is also investigated based on thermally activated hopping (TAH) and quantum mechanical tunnelling (QMT) mechanisms. However, there still lacks research on the effect of moisture on charge transport characteristics and its relationship with experimental results. We herein proposed a method to re-virtualize the distribution of nanoparticles/their aggregates based on the multidimensional scaling method in the first step, and a simple numerical method is further following to estimate the contribution of TAH and QMT conductivities to the experimental ones. The results, firstly, indicate the presence of moisture could lead to significant charge injections, and for different relative humidity conditions, due to their diverse water shell thickness, the separation distances of nanoparticles where deep/shallow traps locate show an obvious reduction and consequently vary the contribution of TAH and QMT conductivities in the measured ones. Second, the TAH mechanism plays the main role in charge transport/conduction, especially under lower RH conditions, while the obvious increment of QMT conduction is attributed to the reduced trap distances caused by thicker conductive water shells and support the existence of deep traps. Besides, the proposed model could be potentially extended to other research topics on electrical properties of polymer nanocomposites, such as particle size, dispersion/distribution status and filler loading concentrations which can be reflected and explained via the variation of nanoparticle surface/trap site distances.</jats:p>