The investigation of the light radiation caused polyethylene based materials deterioration by means of atomic force microscopy

Abstract

The impact of the environmental conditions on the materials used in various devices and constructions, in particular in electrotechnical applications, has an critical impact in terms of their reliability and utilization range in specific climatic conditions. Due to increasing utilitarian requirements, technological processes complexity and introducing new materials (for instance nanomaterials), advanced diagnostic techniques are desired. One of such techniques is atomic force microscopy (AFM), which allows to study the changes of the roughness and mechanical properties of the surface at the submicrometer scale, enabling the investigation of the degradation processes. In this work the deterioration of selected group of polyethylene based materials have been measured by means of AFM, as the samples were exposed to the simulated solar light and UV-C radiation. Such an analysis of the environmental conditions impact on the deterioration process using AFM methods for various versions of specific material was not presented before.