Dielectric Spectroscopy

Abstract

In this chapter, an attempt has been made to review dielectric spectroscopy (DS) as a technique for the characterization of nanomaterials. DS involves the study of the response of a material to an electric field, which furnishes structural information, i.e., molecular structure, physical arrangement, and behavior of the molecules within the structure. DS is a well-established technique in the fields of physics, polymers, and colloidal science and also in pharmaceutics. It is used to measure the dielectric and electric properties of a medium as a function of frequency. Nanomaterials have been known by the term nanodielectric, mainly because of their gradual evolution as excellent functional materials for dielectric and electrical insulation applications. DS has been validated as a powerful technique for appraising the structural and molecular dynamics of nanomaterials. DS in nanomaterial systems is specifically used to probe structure-property relationships, which helps to optimize composition and synthesis/processing conditions, which is useful in the design of new functional materials with envisioned properties. General perspectives such as the principle of DS, dielectric mechanisms such as polarization and relaxation, and dielectric formalisms such as permittivity, electrical modulus, and impedance are described in this chapter.