ION-INDUCED STRUCTURES AND ELECTRICAL-CONDUCTION IN IMPLANTED POLYMER-FILMS

A conducting-grain picture is presented, based on the idea that the ion-polymer interaction process can be simply described as a rapid dissipation of the thermal energy converted from the kinetic energy in the ion track region. Thermal dissipation and efficiency through electronic ionization and nuclear collisions are quite different. A critical transient temperature, determined by the critical energy deposition density, is necessary to activate a thermodynamic relaxation process along the ion track creating conducting graphitic grains. Our high resolution temperature-dependent dc conductivity data reveal a two component conductivity that depends on both one-dimensional variable-range hopping (VRH) and three-dimensional VRH. The relative importance of 3-D VRH conductivity over the entire conductivity seems to depend on the relative rate of the ion energy loss through electronic ionization processes.