Local Charge Injection and Extraction on Surface-Modified Al2O3 Nanoparticles in LDPE.

Borgani, Riccardo; Pallon, Love K H; Hedenqvist, Mikael S; Gedde, Ulf W; Haviland, David B · Nano Lett · 2016

basic_science · Level V

Where this comes from

Abstract

We use a recently developed scanning probe technique to image with high spatial resolution the injection and extraction of charge around individual surface-modified aluminum oxide nanoparticles embedded in a low-density polyethylene (LDPE) matrix. We find that the experimental results are consistent with a simple band structure model where localized electronic states are available in the band gap (trap states) in the vicinity of the nanoparticles. This work offers experimental support to a previously proposed mechanism for enhanced insulating properties of nanocomposite LDPE and provides a powerful experimental tool to further investigate such properties.