The relative permittivity is the permittivity of a material expressed as a ratio with the electric permittivity of a vacuum. A dielectric is an insulating material, and the dielectric constant of an insulator measures the ability of the insulator to store electric energy in an electrical field.
In electromagnetism, the absolute permittivity, often simply called permittivity and denoted by the Greek letter ε (epsilon), is a measure of the electric polarizability of a dielectric. A material with high permittivity polarizes more in response to an applied electric field than a material with low permittivity, thereby storing more energy in the material. In electrostatics, the permittivity plays an important role in determining the capacitance of a capacitor.
Poisson's equation is an elliptic partial differential equation of broad utility in theoretical physics. For example, the solution to Poisson's equation is the potential field caused by a given electric charge or mass density distribution; with the potential field known, one can then calculate electrostatic or gravitational (force) field. It is a generalization of Laplace's equation, which is also frequently seen in physics. The equation is named after French mathematician and physicist Siméon Denis Poisson.
In plasmas and electrolytes, the Debye length, is a measure of a charge carrier's net electrostatic effect in a solution and how far its electrostatic effect persists. With each Debye length the charges are increasingly electrically screened and the electric potential decreases in magnitude by 1/e. A Debye sphere is a volume whose radius is the Debye length. Debye length is an important parameter in plasma physics, electrolytes, and colloids. The corresponding Debye screening wave vector for particles of density , charge at a temperature is given by in Gaussian units. Expressions in MKS units will be given below. The analogous quantities at very low temperatures are known as the Thomas–Fermi length and the Thomas–Fermi wave vector. They are of interest in describing the behaviour of electrons in metals at room temperature.
The Bjerrum length is the separation at which the electrostatic interaction between two elementary charges is comparable in magnitude to the thermal energy scale, , where is the Boltzmann constant and is the absolute temperature in kelvins. This length scale arises naturally in discussions of electrostatic, electrodynamic and electrokinetic phenomena in electrolytes, polyelectrolytes and colloidal dispersions.
Electric potential energy, is a potential energy that results from conservative Coulomb forces and is associated with the configuration of a particular set of point charges within a defined system. An object may have electric potential energy by virtue of two key elements: its own electric charge and its relative position to other electrically charged objects.
Microstrip is a type of electrical transmission line which can be fabricated with any technology where a conductor is separated from a ground plane by a dielectric layer known as the substrate. Microstriplines are used to convey microwave-frequency signals.
The Madelung constant is used in determining the electrostatic potential of a single ion in a crystal by approximating the ions by point charges. It is named after Erwin Madelung, a German physicist.
The chemists Peter Debye and Erich Hückel noticed that solutions that contain ionic solutes do not behave ideally even at very low concentrations. So, while the concentration of the solutes is fundamental to the calculation of the dynamics of a solution, they theorized that an extra factor that they termed gamma is necessary to the calculation of the activity coefficients of the solution. Hence they developed the Debye–Hückel equation and Debye–Hückel limiting law. The activity is only proportional to the concentration and is altered by a factor known as the activity coefficient . This factor takes into account the interaction energy of ions in solution.
The Coulomb constant, the electric force constant, or the electrostatic constant (denoted ke, k or K) is a proportionality constant in electrostatics equations. In SI units it is equal to 8.9875517923(14)×109 kg⋅m3⋅s−2⋅C−2. It was named after the French physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1736–1806) who introduced Coulomb's law.
Vacuum permittivity, commonly denoted ε0 is the value of the absolute dielectric permittivity of classical vacuum. Alternatively may be referred to as the permittivity of free space, the electric constant, or the distributed capacitance of the vacuum. It is an ideal (baseline) physical constant. Its CODATA value is:
The method of image charges is a basic problem-solving tool in electrostatics. The name originates from the replacement of certain elements in the original layout with imaginary charges, which replicates the boundary conditions of the problem.
The Poisson–Boltzmann equation is a useful equation in many settings, whether it be to understand physiological interfaces, polymer science, electron interactions in a semiconductor, or more. It aims to describe the distribution of the electric potential in solution in the direction normal to a charged surface. This distribution is important to determine how the electrostatic interactions will affect the molecules in solution. The Poisson–Boltzmann equation is derived via mean-field assumptions. From the Poisson–Boltzmann equation many other equations have been derived with a number of different assumptions.
The Debye–Hückel theory was proposed by Peter Debye and Erich Hückel as a theoretical explanation for departures from ideality in solutions of electrolytes and plasmas. It is a linearized Poisson–Boltzmann model, which assumes an extremely simplified model of electrolyte solution but nevertheless gave accurate predictions of mean activity coefficients for ions in dilute solution. The Debye–Hückel equation provides a starting point for modern treatments of non-ideality of electrolyte solutions.
The Born–Landé equation is a means of calculating the lattice energy of a crystalline ionic compound. In 1918 Max Born and Alfred Landé proposed that the lattice energy could be derived from the electrostatic potential of the ionic lattice and a repulsive potential energy term.
Defect types include atom vacancies, adatoms, steps, and kinks that occur most frequently at surfaces due to the finite material size causing crystal discontinuity. What all types of defects have in common, whether surface or bulk defects, is that they produce dangling bonds that have specific electron energy levels different from those of the bulk. This difference occurs because these states cannot be described with periodic Bloch waves due to the change in electron potential energy caused by the missing ion cores just outside the surface. Hence, these are localized states that require separate solutions to the Schrödinger equation so that electron energies can be properly described. The break in periodicity results in a decrease in conductivity due to defect scattering.
The non-radiative dielectric (NRD) waveguide has been introduced by Yoneyama in 1981. In Fig. 1 the cross section of NRD guide is shown: it consists of a dielectric rectangular slab of height a and width b, which is placed between two metallic parallel plates of suitable width. The structure is practically the same as the H waveguide, proposed by Tischer in 1953. Due to the dielectric slab, the electromagnetic field is confined in the vicinity of the dielectric region, whereas in the outside region, for suitable frequencies, the electromagnetic field decays exponentially. Therefore, if the metallic plates are sufficiently extended, the field is practically negligible at the end of the plates and therefore the situation does not greatly differ from the ideal case in which the plates are infinitely extended. The polarization of the electric field in the required mode is mainly parallel to the conductive walls. As it is known, if the electric field is parallel to the walls, the conduction losses decrease in the metallic walls at the increasing frequency, whereas, if the field is perpendicular to the walls, losses increase at the increasing frequency. Since the NRD waveguide has been devised for its implementation at millimeter waves, the selected polarization minimizes the ohmic losses in the metallic walls.
Biology Monte Carlo methods (BioMOCA) have been developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to simulate ion transport in an electrolyte environment through ion channels or nano-pores embedded in membranes. It is a 3-D particle-based Monte Carlo simulator for analyzing and studying the ion transport problem in ion channel systems or similar nanopores in wet/biological environments. The system simulated consists of a protein forming an ion channel (or an artificial nanopores like a Carbon Nano Tube, CNT), with a membrane (i.e. lipid bilayer) that separates two ion baths on either side. BioMOCA is based on two methodologies, namely the Boltzmann transport Monte Carlo (BTMC) and particle-particle-particle-mesh (P3M). The first one uses Monte Carlo method to solve the Boltzmann equation, while the later splits the electrostatic forces into short-range and long-range components.
The electric dipole moment is a measure of the separation of positive and negative electrical charges within a system, that is, a measure of the system's overall polarity. The SI unit for electric dipole moment is the coulomb-meter (C⋅m). The debye (D) is another unit of measurement used in atomic physics and chemistry.
In condensed matter physics and physical chemistry, the Lifshitz theory of van der Waals forces, sometimes called the macroscopic theory of van der Waals forces, is a method proposed by Evgeny Mikhailovich Lifshitz in 1954 for treating van der Waals forces between bodies which does not assume pairwise additivity of the individual intermolecular forces; that is to say, the theory takes into account the influence of neighboring molecules on the interaction between every pair of molecules located in the two bodies, rather than treating each pair independently.
