Antistatic Agents - The Effectiveness of Ethoxylated Fatty Acid Amides in Reducing the Static Charge Decay Time of LDPE Film as..., 2000 Polymers, Laminations & Coatings Conference Proceedings

A.J. Maltby, M.Read--Commodity polymers have excellent electrical insulating characteristics, which gives them the potential to build up high static charges. These charges can be responsible for electrical discharges triggering explosions, cause damage to microelectronics packaged in them and lead to dust pickup marring the appearance of display packaging.

There are several approaches which can be taken to make polymer articles conduct static charge away to earth from conductive fillers through conductive polymers to migratory additives which are dependent on attracting moisture to the polymer surface to function. In the fabrication of transparent film, the latter group are the most important. These materials are normally based on fatty acid derivatives and have hydroxyl functionality in common.

This paper explores the effectiveness and drawbacks of using these materials and presents a variant on this approach which provides an effective amine free anti-static system potentially suitable for use in electronics packaging. Experimental data is presented which covers glycerol esters, amine ethoxylates, fatty alkanolamides and amide ethoxylates. The performance of these materials is investigated both when applied to the surface and when combined with polymer during processing.