Surface Protection of Polymer Materials from Atomic Oxygen: a Review

doi:10.15541/jim20180515

Abstract

Abstract:

Polymers, as substrate of composite material on the surface of spacecraft, have such advantages as light mass and high strength. Atomic oxygen (AO) is one of the highest content particles of low earth orbit, and high-energy high-flux AO bombardment causes the polymers’ surface erosion and mass loss at different degree, resulting in polymers degradation. Thus, AO is one of major threats in space environment that reduces reliability of space devices and shortens their working life span. This review summarized current global protection technologies from AO in recent years. Among them, surface chemical modification method with advantages of body-modification and protection coating, providing organic/inorganic composite with modified layer through comprehensive protection performance. This review discussed the method to explore the AO protection reaction mechanism by computational simulation. Computational simulation combined with experiments may reveal nature of the protection, facilitate future researches on AO protection, and provide guidance for fabrication surface polymer materials used in domestic parts of the aerospace craft, especially the large-scale flexible space solar cell array

Key words: atomic oxygen, polymer, space protection, surface modification, polyimide, computational simulation, review

CLC Number:

LI Hao-Geng,GU Hong-Yu,ZHANG Yu-Zhi,SONG Li-Xin,WU Ling-Nan,QI Zhen-Yi,ZHANG Tao. Surface Protection of Polymer Materials from Atomic Oxygen: a Review[J]. Journal of Inorganic Materials, 2019, 34(7): 685-693.

Figures/Tables 7

Fig. 1 Molecular structure of polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) [24]

Fig. 2 PI surface modification to form polyamic acid: NaOH hydrolysis of PI (Step 1) to form sodium salt of polyamic acid followed by acidification (Step 2) to form polyamic acid[50]

Fig. 3 SEM images of AO exposed (effective fluence ~2.0×1020atoms/cm2) samples: untreated samples[52,53] (a) masked section and (b) exposed section, images of ImplantoxTM treatment being (c) masked and (d) exposed sections, and AO exposed (e) Implantox-treated section and (f) untreated sections

Fig. 4 SEM images of AO exposed (effective fluence~ 2.0×1020 atoms/cm2) sample surfaces morphology[56]: untreated original PI and (b) SiO2 coated PI

Table 1 Erosion yield of atomic oxygen on PI samples[56]

Sample	F/(×10²⁰ O atom?cm^-2)	ΔM/mg	A/cm²	(ΔM/A)/(mg?cm^-2)	E/(×10^-24, cm³atom^-1)
Kapton	3.09	5.03	3.14	1.60	3.65
SiO_x coated PI	3.09	0.17	3.14	0.05	0.12

Fig. 5 Initial (left, t=0) and final (right, t=35 ps) simulation snapshots of different PI protection system under AO impact[71]:PI-grafted (a) 15wt% POSS and (b) 30wt% POSS; 15wt% graphene (c) randomly oriented and (d) aligned

Fig. 6 Potential barrier of an O atom permeating into interlayer of double-layer graphene with matched divacancy defect[74]

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