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.