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Concept
Dielectric
Summary
In electromagnetism, a dielectric (or dielectric medium) is an electrical insulator that can be polarised by an applied electric field. When a dielectric material is placed in an electric field, electric charges do not flow through the material as they do in an electrical conductor, because they have no loosely bound, or free, electrons that may drift through the material, but instead they shift, only slightly, from their average equilibrium positions, causing dielectric polarisation. Because of dielectric polarisation, positive charges are displaced in the direction of the field and negative charges shift in the direction opposite to the field (for example, if the field is moving parallel to the positive x axis, the negative charges will shift in the negative x direction). This creates an internal electric field that reduces the overall field within the dielectric itself. If a dielectric is composed of weakly bonded molecules, those molecules not only become polarised, but also reorient so that their symmetry axes align to the field.
The study of dielectric properties concerns storage and dissipation of electric and magnetic energy in materials. Dielectrics are important for explaining various phenomena in electronics, optics, solid-state physics and cell biophysics.
Although the term insulator implies low electrical conduction, dielectric typically means materials with a high polarisability. The latter is expressed by a number called the relative permittivity. The term insulator is generally used to indicate electrical obstruction while the term dielectric is used to indicate the energy storing capacity of the material (by means of polarisation). A common example of a dielectric is the electrically insulating material between the metallic plates of a capacitor. The polarisation of the dielectric by the applied electric field increases the capacitor's surface charge for the given electric field strength.
The term dielectric was coined by William Whewell (from dia + electric) in response to a request from Michael Faraday.
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