Effect of the linseed oil surface treatment on the performance of resistive plate chambers

Results on the behaviour of several bakelite Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) without the linseed oil treatment of the internal electrodes will be presented. Efficiency, collected charge and cluster size distributions will be compared to the ones of a standard oiled RPC. Currents and single rate are the quantities most affected by the surface treatment of the electrodes beyond the optical/mechanical properties. A factor 4 less in currents and at least a factor 10 less in single rate is achieved using standard oiled RPCs operated in streamer mode.