Fast method for determining significant electrical parameters of ESD-Textiles

The paper presents a fast method for determining the real efficiency of various quasi-conductive insertions in several textile for clothing, aiming to convert these fabrics from too good insulating materials in electrostatic dissipative (ESD) ones. Dealing with static charge accumulation, the most usual parameter is the surface resistivity. Starting from the advantage of the same measuring set-up, we newly propose, for a better characterization of these thin materials, the consideration of the volume resistivity in tandem with their electric permittivity. In the first part, the paper deals with one of the factors influencing the values of surface resistivity: the duration of voltage application. There were chosen for exemplification four samples being representative for ESD-fabrics category. Based on the Keithley's hard and soft infrastructure, it was applied the “Alternating Polarity” method. There is plotted a graph presenting the various trends of the material response at different durations for the application of the same excitation voltage. The second part develops a fast method aiming to determine, simultaneously with the volume resistivity, the electric permittivity, by applying the “Step Voltage” program included in 6524 software.