Charge transport in non-metallic solids

Abstract

Workers engaged in a wide range of investigations of charge transport in non-metallic solids came together at a meeting of the Institute of Physics Dielectric Group, held in London on 2 April 2008. Topics included both ionic and electronic conduction, investigations of the fundamental mechanisms of charge transport, percolation, modelling the conduction process in both natural and man-made composite electrical and electromagnetic materials, the design and development of solids with specified conduction properties and the ac characteristics of non-metallic solids. In the first session, the long-standing problem of the anomalous power law increase in ac conductivity with frequency was addressed by a set of four presentations. Jeppe Dyre, an invited speaker from Roskilde University, Denmark, introduced the problem and stressed the universality of the frequency dependence observed in the ac conductivities of disordered non-metallic materials. He showed that it could be obtained from a simple random barrier model, independent of the barrier distribution. Darryl Almond, University of Bath, showed that the electrical responses of large networks of randomly positioned resistors and capacitors, simulating the microstructures of disordered two-phase (conductor insulator) materials, exhibit the same frequency dependence. He demonstrated their robustness to component value and distribution and suggested that it was an emergent property of these networks and of two-phase materials. Klaus Funke, an invited speaker from the University of Munster, Germany, presented a detailed model of ion motion in disordered ionic materials. He stressed the need to account for the concerted many-particle processes that occur whilst ions hop from site to site in response to an applied electric field. The conductivity spectra obtained from this work reproduce the same frequency dispersion and have the additional feature of conductivity saturation at high frequencies. Tony West, University of Sheffield, UK, discussed the analysis of the ac electrical response data of ionically or electrically conducting ceramics, using constant phase elements to deal with power law dispersions. He presented strategies for dealing with data made complex by the overlapping, in the frequency domain, of different materials response components: bulk, grain boundary, electrode, etc. The final morning paper concerning space charge measurement was given by Kaori Fukunagwa, NICT, Japan. The closely linked but diverse nature of the morning papers stimulated healthy debate between the presentations and during the lunch break and poster session, during which the Mansel Davies prize was awarded to Dr Shahid Hussain from QinetiQ for his poster entitled Dielectric relaxation of glass particles with nanoscale metallic coatings.In the second session, again through a set of four presentations, the electrical and electromagnetic properties of composite materials were more broadly considered. Isaac Balberg, an invited speaker from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, gave a detailed and in many ways philosophical review of critical behaviour in composites near the percolation threshold. He focused on the validity of using critical response developed from the classic Scher and Zallen model of a regular lattice when considering the more realistic situation of composites in which hopping and tunnelling are prevalent, the key to observing universal or non-universal critical behaviour being the significance of nearest neighbour versus non-nearest neighbour conducting paths and the distribution of resistances in the composite. Ian Youngs, from Dstl, described the microwave response of conductor--insulator percolating composites and especially the observation of novel plasma-like response under certain circumstances. It was shown that the standard low frequency approximation of the dielectric function of the metallic phase impedes modelling of this response. Christian Brosseau, Université de Bretagne Occidentale, France, presented an invited paper discussing electromagneto-mechanical coupling in ferrite-filled plastics. A model for the changes to the electromagnetic properties of the composite as a function of applied mechanical stress was presented and linked to the elastic network response of the composite. The work is relevant to flexible materials such as circuits and for smart sensor applications. Rolf Pelster, Universität des Saarlandes, Germany, concluded the meeting with a comparison of micro- and nano-composites of magnetic particles dispersed in polymer. Broadband dielectric spectroscopy was used to highlight the particle-size differences and the likely modification of the host polymer when nano-sized filler particles were used. The dielectric data was used to infer the microstructural contribution to the effective properties of each composite and this information was used to extract an estimate of the intrinsic magnetic properties of the filler particles, again showing a difference between micro- and nano-sized particles.This cluster issue of Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics contains four of the above-mentioned papers presented at the meeting. We would like to thank those authors for preparing their contributions to this special cluster. Their papers provide a cross section of the topics presented at the meeting and we hope you enjoy reading them.