On Surface Resistivity Measurements of Thin Insulation Materials

—Surface resistivity measurements are frequently used for material characterization. However, the influence of sample thickness is not covered sufficiently in ASTM D257 and IEC 62631-3-2 standards. In the present work, electric field simulations and polarization-depolarization current (PDC) measurements are used to study the thickness dependence of such measurements. It is found that measurements according to the standards are not reasonable for low thickness (< 1 mm) and high surface resistivity (> 10 13 …10 14 Ω). The dependence on thickness is shown to be mainly due to the different tangential electric field stress along the measured surface. Furthermore, indications for charge injection at high electric field stress inside the sample volume are found by a positive polarity of the depolarization currents. A novel electrode configuration for more accurate (more than one order of magnitude) and much less thickness-dependent surface resistivity measurements is proposed in this work and its benefits are demonstrated. It is also shown how the parasitic influence of an electrode holder can be effectively reduced by more than one order of magnitude when measuring surface resistivities. In addition, it is found that polarization times for steady-state surface resistivity values should be at least several minutes instead of the suggested 60 s from standards.