Contact Electrification by Quantum-Mechanical Tunneling.

Research (Wash D C)

CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, Beijing Key Laboratory of Micro-Nano Energy and Sensor, Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China.

Published: August 2019

A simple model of charge transfer by loss-less quantum-mechanical tunneling between two solids is proposed. The model is applicable to electron transport and contact electrification between e.g. a metal and a dielectric solid. Based on a one-dimensional effective-mass Hamiltonian, the tunneling transmission coefficient of electrons through a barrier from one solid to another solid is calculated analytically. The transport rate (current) of electrons is found using the Tsu-Esaki equation and accounting for different Fermi functions of the two solids. We show that the tunneling dynamics is very sensitive to the vacuum potential versus the two solids conduction-band edges and the thickness of the vacuum gap. The relevant time constants for tunneling and contact electrification, relevant for triboelectricity, can vary over several orders of magnitude when the vacuum gap changes by one order of magnitude, say, 1 Å to 10 Å. Coulomb repulsion between electrons on the left and right material surfaces is accounted for in the tunneling dynamics.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6750111PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.34133/2019/6528689DOI Listing

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