Effects of proton pre-irradiation on radiation induced conductivity of polyimide

• Radiation induced conductivity (RIC) of radiation damaged Kapton-H was studied.
• Proton pre-irradiation causes obvious decreasing of the degradation of RIC.
• Proton induced Displacement damage is the dominate effect on the RIC degradation.
• The degradation of pyromellitimide is the main factor to degrade the RIC.

As an important parameter to evaluate the charge/discharge behaviors, radiation induced conductive behaviors of proton pre-irradiated polyimide films were investigated. The results indicate that the proton pre-irradiation results in decrease down to three orders in radiation induced conductivity (RIC) of polyimide as the proton (60–110 keV) fluence is just 1×1014 p/cm2. Further analysis implies that, the dominate effect on the RIC degradation is proton pre-irradiation induced displacement damage, which results in the decomposition of pyromellitimide in polyimide.