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Radiation Induced Conductivityof Highly-Insulating Spacecraft Materials

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Radiation Induced Conductivityof Highly-Insulating Spacecraft Materials

Publication Date

2007

Abstract

Polymers are widely used on spacecraft for different specific functions : thermal and electrical insulation, mechanical support, adhesion... These polymers are highly sensitive to radiation met in space. Their electric properties is especially significantly altered leading to very specific behaviour in term of charge transport and discharge processes. Different dedicated facilities have been developed at ONERA, with CNES support, for the characterisation of space used materials in representative conditions. Thanks to the use of these different facilities, it has indeed been demonstrated that radiation induced conductivity of space polymers strongly affects the charging surface potential and depends on several parameters (radiation dose rate, total radiation dose, temperature and on the induced electric field) through complex physical mechanisms that are described in this paper. The sensitivity of polymers on these different parameters strongly depends upon polymer trap distribution and molecular configuration. Experimental as well as numerical results shall be presented in this paper, coupled with the different experimental techniques developed and applied in this work.

Comments

10th Spacecraft Charging Technology Conference, (Biarritz, France, June 18-21, 2007).

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