Qualification of Polymeric Compounds for Electrostatic Discharge Protection

Nowadays the development of electric and electronic equipment with applications in industry, medicine, and telecommunications or in outer space imposes the new requirements regarding the reduction of the risk of the electrostatic discharges occurrence. New researches have been developed to obtain polymeric compounds as answer to this demand and new multifunctional polymeric compounds with antistatic or static dissipative properties have been obtained, adding, besides the basic properties, the ability to control the accumulation / dissipation of electric charge. The paper deals with a comparative analysis of the polymeric compounds used as antistatic and dissipative materials. The criterion of classification is surface resistivity, and method of measurement applied is absorption-resorption currents method. The case study consists in qualification to ESD protection, with the surface resistivity criterion, of four types of polymeric materials, based on polyethylene, polycarbonate, and polytetrafluorethylene.