Vladimir N. Kestelman - Böcker

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the structure and properties of electret materials used in engineering, medicine, and biotechnology. Characterized by their ability to generate a constant electric field, electrets have traditionally been used as a method of electronic focusing in applications such as gas filters and microphones. However, in recent years it has been demonstrated that they have a much wider sphere of application from controlling lubrication in machine parts to regulating drug diffusion. This book begins by introducing the concept and the underlying physics of electrets before going on to discuss the many applications. Starting with a discussion of traditional applications, such as acoustic transducers and filters, it then moves on to more novel uses. Their use as an anticorrosion and polymer coating technique is examined as well as their role in the lubrication of friction joints. Biological and medical applications are also covered before the final chapter looks into the economic and ecological aspects of these materials.The text should be of interest to all material scientists and engineers with an interest in this developing field, from students needing a general introduction, to practising engineers and scientists requiring an insight into exactly how electrets relate to specific applications.

Recently a new sphere in materials science· has formed which subject is structure and properties of electret materials used in engineering, medicine, biotechnology and other branches. It is characterized by specific methods of experimental investigations based on recording charge transfer, polarization and depolarization of dielectrics and involves original techniques and physico-mathematical aids where notions that exist at the interface of several natural and technical sciences are concentrated. It embraces a vast area of applications mainly in engineering, instrument­ making, electronics, medical technique, biotechnology, and etc., has a specialized technological base for electric polarization of dielectrics composed of uncommon technological methods, equipment and instrumentation. Apparently, future fundamental investigations in the domain of electret materials science are to be developed at the interface of computer of dielectrics. Elaboration of a simulation, physics and physical chemistry model for electric polarization of solid media with uneven charge density distribution, complicated by surface phenomena, outer electromagnetic, heat, chemical and other effects, presents a grave methodological problem. The simulation of structures in which polarization follows diffusion mechanism of chemically active molecules or their fragments, and the development of calculation methods for polarized charge relaxation and regularities of dielectric nonlinear properties, are the most urgent objectives of current research. Success in bioelectret effect studies is anticipated to result in profound widening of natural science knowledge.