  The triboelectrification of conducting materials can be explained by electron
transfer between different Fermi levels. However, triboelectrification in
dielectrics is poorly understood. The surface dipole formations are shown to be
caused by the contact-induced surface lattice deformations. An Atomistic Field
Theory (AFT) based formulation is utilized to calculate the distribution of the
polarization, electric and potential fields. The induced fields are considered
as the driving force for charge transfer. The simulation results show that a
MgO/BaTiO3 tribopair can generate up to 104 V/cm^2, which is comprable with the
data in the published literature.
