| Abstract
| - Electrostatic-charge accumulation and discharge can cause a variety of problems in imaging, electronic,and packaging materials and processes. Nanoparticulate antimony-doped tin oxide containing antistaticlayers provide robust electronic conductivity that survives aqueous and thermal processing. Dielectricspectroscopy of tin oxide−gelatin (antistatic) thin films reveals relaxation processes that depend on tinoxide-to-gelatin ratios and upon tin oxide−gelatin film thickness. The frequency maxima of dielectric-losspeaks inversely correlate with surface electrical resistance (SER) measurements. A simple model of alayered heterogeneous dielectric explains the relative position of dielectric-loss peaks in terms of antistatic-layer conductivity. Dielectric measurements of antistatic layers do not require ohmic contact with suchlayers, and measurements on “buried layers” are straightforward. An observation of apparent percolationinduced by variations in coverage, at constant tin oxide-to-gelatin weight ratio, suggests that the coatingconditions and drying processes appear to play a role in network formation and nanoparticulate aggregation.Scaling of (inverse) SER and dielectric-loss peak frequencies above the percolation threshold conformswith scaling expected for electrical-conductivity percolation in three dimensions.
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