Synergetic effects of 1 MeV electron irradiation on the surface erosion in polyimide by atomic oxygen

Abstract Erosion studies of polyimide, exposed to high energy electrons and atomic oxygen, is necessary in view of its application in space vehicles. Here we present the erosion studies and degradation characteristics of polyimide after its sequential exposure to 1 MeV pulsed electron beam from Microtron accelerator and ~12 eV oxygen ions from a plasma reactor in the laboratory. The fluence of electrons was varied from 5 × 1014 to 2.0 × 1015 electrons/cm2 and that of oxygen ions from ~5 × 1016 to 2 × 1017 ions cm−2. The post irradiated and virgin polyimide samples were characterized by gravimetric analysis and contact-angle measurements. The morphological and spectroscopic information were obtained with Scanning Electron Microscopy, Fourier Transform Infra-Red spectroscopy, and photo-absorption spectroscopy. The erosion yield, surface wettability and the surface roughness were seen to be much higher when exposed to both the radiations as compared to either of them, reflecting the synergetic effects.