2016/09/09 by André Schella, Stephan Herminghaus, Schella, André +3
Chemistry · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials #Electrostatics and Colloid Interactions #Electrowetting and Microfluidic Technologies #FOS: Physical sciences #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1609.04639
8 Pages, 7 Figures
openalex publication_date 2016/09/09 · arxiv created 2016/12/13 · arxiv updated 2016/12/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the effect of humidity on the charge accumulation of polymer granulates shaken vertically in a stainless steel container. The setup allows to control the humidity level from 5 % to 100 %RH while performing automated charge measurements in a Faraday cup directly connected to the shaking container. We find that samples of approximately 2000 polymer spheres become highly charged at low humidity levels (<30 %RH), but acquire almost no charge for humidity levels above 80 %RH. The transition between these two regimes does depend on the material, as does the sign of the charge. For the latter we find a correlation with the contact angle of the polymer with only very hydrophilic particles attaining positive charges. We show that this humidity dependence of tribo-charging can be used to control segregation in shaken binary mixtures.