Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Olson, Karl P., Marks, Laurence D.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.16083
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Table of Contents:
  • Triboelectricity, when rubbing or contacting materials causes electric charge transfer, is ubiquitous across many fields, and has been studied in detail for centuries. Despite this, a complete description of triboelectricity remains elusive. Here, we analyze the contact between a metal asperity and a semiconductor, including contributions from the depletion zone of the semiconductor and from flexoelectric polarization that arises due to the strain gradients at asperity contacts. The free charges involved in charge transfer are then discussed and calculated. As a result, we develop a quantitative model for triboelectric charge transfer that details how charge transfer scales with contact parameters, the relative influence of depletion and flexoelectricity, and which agrees with various trends in multiple classes of triboelectric experiments.