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Water dewetting generates static electricity. We reviewed historical experiments of this phenomenon, and we studied the charging of polymer slides and metal electrode supported polymer films withdrawn vertically from a pool of aqueous solutions. For pure water, charging was negative and surface charge densities increased with the speed of dewetting, which we explain by the thermally activated entrainment of nanometer-sized water droplets or clusters charged by unbalanced adsorbed electric double-layer ions. Surface charge densities increased for reduced polymer film thickness following a power law, which we explain by reduced discharge of the entrained water volumes. At low salinity
Knorr et al. (Fri,) studied this question.