Conductive and antistatic effect

Needle-like zinc oxide whiskers growth in four directions have a three-dimensional extension. When they are dispersed in a polymer matrix, the adjacent needle parts overlap with each other to form a conductive path, which makes the transmission of charge possible, gives the material electrical conductivity, and also brings a certain antistatic property to polymer materials. 

He found that zinc oxide whiskers can effectively improve the conductive property of PP resin. When the whisker volume fraction reaches 3%, the resistivity of the material decreases to below 10 Q cm, which is seven orders of magnitude lower than the resistivity of a pure PP matrix, whose resistivity is 10 Q cm and could meet the requirement of a general antistatic material. Wan and Jin put zinc oxide whiskers into an epoxy resin and obtained the same findings. Zhou et al. believed that there are three kinds of conductive mechanisms in the system network conduction, tunnel effect, and point discharge effect. 

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