Effect of injecting electrodes on TSD behaviour of vacuum deposited PVF films

Depolarization behaviour of vacuum deposited polyvinyl fluoride (PVF) films has been studied as a function of nature of the electrode materials used during polarization such as copper, silver, aluminium and indium using the thermally stimulated discharge current (TSD) technique. TSD spectra of these films show a single relaxation peak centered around 430 ± 1 K with activation energies of ∼ 0.65 eV. The peak current and the charge associated with the relaxation peak depend strongly on the electrode material used. This has been attributed to the electrode-polymer interface barrier controlling the injection of the charge carriers into PVF films that results into space charge effects by subsequent trapping of the injected charge carriers at macroscopic distances. Paper presented at the 2nd International Conference on Ionic Devices, Anna University, Chennai, India, Nov. 28–30, 2003.