IOP Groups
The Dielectrics Group
The Dielectrics Group was founded from the incorporation of the Dielectrics Society into the Institute on 1 October 2001. It is dedicated to the international development and dissemination of dielectrics research, application, measurement and interpretation in a wide range of non-metallic solids and liquids including biological and pharmaceutical systems. The breadth of the subject is significant and the Group sustains the historical cross-disciplinary focus of the Dielectrics Society including its emphasis on meeting the dissemination and discussion needs of both the UK and international scientific and engineering communities.
Dielectrics for YOU
The Group runs a rolling programme of conferences and meetings including one day and short events and discussion meetings. Many of these meetings are in association with other groups of the Institute and with other professional institutions. The Group's website is intended to be the prime communication channel for members in the UK and abroad.
The group aims to engage interactively with its membership and the dielectrics community world-wide through a regular newsletter and technical features section. Why not tell us why you're interested in dielectrics by sending in a contribution to the next newsletter or the website.
Let's get the dielectric community resonating ...
Dielectrics for All
Dielectrics is a field of knowledge that belongs not only to physics and chemistry, but also to electrical engineering. Dielectrics is not confined to the narrow area of "insulators", but to any non-metal when their interaction with electric or electromagnetic fields is of interest. Polarisation and the dynamics of electric charges are at the heart of dielectrics. These are often described in terms of macroscopic properties such as permittivity, dielectric loss and breakdown strength. Electrical engineers have characterised dielectrics macroscopically using field vectors, equivalent circuits and reliability statistics. In contrast, the physicist and chemist have pushed forward the understanding of dielectric response in terms of molecular and structural response and relaxation. Many of the fundamental problems have now been addressed and it is now possible to move (quoting Von Hippel) from "dielectric analysis" to "dielectric synthesis". This is of considerable interest to most areas of science and demonstrates the cross-disciplinary nature of "dielectrics". Some examples include:
- The development of new materials and systems (e.g. non-linear optical, electrets, piezoelectrics, ferroelectrics, improved insulators, drugs and bio-systems etc.),
- The understanding and predicting of the behaviour of materials and systems to electric fields (e.g. mobile phones, power lines, drugs, biological systems etc.),
- The use of dielectric response in analysis, diagnostic tools and process monitoring and control (e.g. relaxation, conduction and transport, space charge, non-linear affects, electrical ageing and breakdown).
The pages for the Group are currently being transferred to the new Institute of Physics website. Until this process is complete the original pages for the Group can be accessed here.
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