A change in the surface resistivity of a thin film of polypropylene (PP) and polystyrene (PS) of thickness 100 μm has been investigated. Using the Direct Current (DC) glow discharge the thin film of the PP and PS have been treated for various discharge powers and treatment time and the modification in the surface energy and consequently in the surface resistivity has been observed. To investigate the modification in the surface energy after DC glow discharge treatment, contact angle of two test liquids formamide and de-ionized water over the surface of PP and PS were measured. By measuring the contact angle the change in surface energy and it's two, components polar and dispersive has been measured. It has been observed that at a given power level of DC glow discharge surface energy and its polar component increases with increasing the treatment time, attains a maximum value and then becomes almost constant. With the increase in the surface energy a decrease in surface resistivities has been observed correspondingly for both the samples polypropylene and polystyrene. For the maximum power we used in the experiment i.e. 5 watt the surface resistivity of polypropylene (PP) decreased to 1.24x10 ¹² Ω/cm² and for polystyrene (PS) decreased to 1.43x10 ⁹ Ω/cm² for the treatment time of nearly 35 seconds, which before the treatment was measured to be 4.59x10¹⁵ Ω/cm² and 2.32x10¹² Ω/cm² for polypropylene (PP) and polystyrene (PS) respectively.

Key words: Polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), DC glow discharge treatment, surface

modification, surface resistivity.

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