Theoretical Analysis of the Radiation-Induced Conductivity in Polymers Exposed to Pulsed and Continuous Electron Beams

Abstract

We have performed comparative numerical calculations using a multiple trapping (MT) formalism with an exponential and an aggregate two-exponential trap distributions for describing two mostly used experimental setups for studying the radiation-induced conductivity (RIC) and the time-of-flight (TOF) effects. Computations have been done for pulsed and long-time electron-beam irradiations in a small-signal regime. Predictions of these two approaches differ appreciably in both setups. The classical MT approach proved very popular in photoconductive polymers generally and in molecularly doped polymers in particular, while a newly proposed complex MT worked well in common polymers. It has been shown that the complex MT successfully accounts for the presence of inherent deep traps, which may or may not have an energy distribution.