Internal Charge Accumulation and Chemical Analyses of Fluorinated Polymer Irradiated by Proton

Abstract

The number of satellites operated in an environment in which exist high-energy protons is currently increasing. Therefore, the investigation of the impact of protons on the insulation properties of materials is important. In this work, we investigate the relationship between charge accumulation phenomena and modification of molecule structure by proton irradiation. We focus on ETFE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene copolymer) used at wire harness irradiated by proton and measured the space charge distribution using the PEA method during the proton irradiation. Furthermore, we investigated the modification of the molecular chain using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). As the result, we observed that the molecule chain is scissored by proton irradiation. These phenomena can be considered as one of the reasons for charge accumulation.