Electrical conduction behaviour of pure and anthracene doped poly(methyl methacrylate) foils

The dark conduction current in 100 μm thick pure and anthracene doped bimetallized poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) foils was measured at temperatures ranging from 333 to 383 K and filds ranging from 8 to 50 kV/cm. An attempt was made to identify the nature of the current by comparing its observed dependence on electric field, temperature and dopant concentration with the respective characteristic features of the existing theories of electrical conduction. The observed characteristics suggest that the charge carriers are generated by field assisted lowering of coulombic barriers at the traps and are conducted through the bulk of the material by a hopping process between the localized states by a Jonscher–Ansari modified Poole–Frenkel mechanism. The high value of the activation energy is considered to indicate the possibility of charge carrier species inside the polymer bulk being ionic in nature.