Materials charging under UV and electron flux and subsequent electrical conductivity (and its dependence on internal electric field, temperature, and UV flux) in ESA ESTEC's dedicated vacuum chamber is simulated with SPIS.

Spacecraft charging simulations are highly dependent on the material properties: Photoemission and secondary emission yields, conductivity, surface resistivity, permittivity and their dependence on environment parameters (eg. temperature, sunlight flux). For dielectrics, conductivity is one of the most critical ones, crucial to properly assess charging risks. It's dependence on temperature, sunlight, electric field within the dielectrics or even hysteresis effects are also crucial to understand in order to differentiate dissipative materials.

Retrieval of these charging properties from the charge and discharge measurements performed in measurement setups is not an easy task. In order to properly understand the physics taking place in such measurement setup, we simulate the charge and discharge experiments performed in ESA ESTEC's material properties characterisation chamber. The goal is eventually to integrate such simulation on the material properties retrieval.