TSDC–an emerging technique to characterize a bioelectret

摘要: An electret is a piece of dielectric material that is capable of storing charges in a quasi permanent state and finds an important place in several areas including signal transmission and reception. There is a constant quest to understand bio-compatible electrets and the electret state in bio-materials. Surprisingly, a considerable number of naturally occurring amino acids seem to have promising potential. We demonstrate the use of a simple technique called TSDC (Thermally Stimulated Depolarization Current) to characterize the bio-electret state in an amino acid. In the TSDC technique, the material is subjected to a higher polarizing electric field at a selected temperature, and is subsequently frozen to a possible low temperature. This is followed by removing the field and ramping to a higher temperature yielding depolarisation currents, called TSDC spectra. This contains information such as activation energies, and …