Charge measurement of electrospun polyvinylidene fluoride fibers using a custom-made Faraday bucket

Harshal Gade; Nitin Parsa; O Steve Roberts; George G Chase; Darrell H Reneker

doi:10.1063/1.5142386

Charge measurement of electrospun polyvinylidene fluoride fibers using a custom-made Faraday bucket

Rev Sci Instrum. 2020 Jul 1;91(7):075107. doi: 10.1063/1.5142386.

Authors

Harshal Gade¹, Nitin Parsa², O Steve Roberts¹, George G Chase¹, Darrell H Reneker³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The University of Akron, 185 E. Mill St., Akron, Ohio 44325, USA.
² Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Akron, Akron, Ohio 44325, USA.
³ Department of Polymer Science, Goodyear Polymer Centre, The University of Akron, Akron, Ohio 44325-3909, USA.

PMID: 32752851
DOI: 10.1063/1.5142386

Abstract

Electrical charges on fabrics, films, and membrane materials are of scientific interest for material development and performance. In many applications, available instruments do not have sufficient sensitivity to detect variations in charge needed for scientific investigations. This paper discusses the design and construction of a custom-made Faraday bucket for measuring the charge of electrospun polyvinylidene fluoride fiber mats of sizes 3 × 3 cm² and 4 × 4 cm². An electrometer directly measured the change in the voltage potentials of the inner conductor of the Faraday bucket due to the insertion of fiber mat samples. The measured potentials were converted to electrical charge by modeling the Faraday bucket as a source-free resistance-capacitance circuit. The results show that the Faraday bucket was sufficiently sensitive and measured differences in the potential and charge of the fiber mats due to variations in sample size (or mass), and it detected differences in charge depending on whether the sample was taken from the center or the edges of the electrospun fiber mats.