Design and fabrication of an electrode array sensor for probing the electric potential distribution at the mesoscopic scale in antistatic felts

We present an original voltage probe design for measuring the electric potential distribution at the mesoscopic scale (i.e., 1 mm–1 cm) in antistatic felts. The felts are composed of a mixture of non-conductive and metallic fibers and exhibit complex nonlinear electric behavior—including possibly nonlinearity and hysteresis effects—which may be due to localized electrical or electromechanical phenomena. The sensor consists of an array of 8 × 9 needle electrodes (phgr 160 µm at the shaft and less than phgr 50 µm toward the apex), which are mechanically maintained at fixed relative positions while their tips are inserted inside the fabric of the sample. The interelectrode distance is 1.5 mm and the overall active area is 12 × 12 mm². The electrical insulation resistance for nearest neighbor pairs of electrodes was found to be larger than 860 GΩ, thus making the sensor suitable for measuring antistatic felts with an electric resistance that typically does not exceed a few GΩ. The sensor was successfully used for measuring the distribution of the electric potential in a polyester fabric subjected to voltages of up to 6.2 kV, and in a sample containing 2% in weight of metallic fibers, demonstrating the presence of irreversible changes in that felt sample (i.e., with conductive fibers) at high voltages. It is concluded that the developed probe voltage is a promising technique that could be used for the assessment of the conduction mechanisms in the antistatic materials at the mesoscopic scale.