Analysis of spatial distribution of charges and dipoles in electrets by a transient heating technique

Abstract

A method is discussed for measuring the separate spatial distributions of fixed charge and permanent polarization in a uniform insulator. Changes in the potential difference across the insulator are measured when a known nonuniform time‐dependent temperature perturbation is established through the sample thickness. The contributions to the measured signal from real charge and polarization charge have the same form, but are weighted differently. Deconvolution of the experimental data, therefore, yields a linear combination of the spatial distributions of real and polarization charges. These two distributions can be separated by utilizing the temperature dependence of these weighting factors.