A MODEL FOR INCORPORATING SURFACE PHENOMENA INTO THE DIELECTRIC RESPONSE OF A HETEROGENEOUS MEDIUM

A mathematical formulation is presented which incorporates the effects of surface phenomena into the dielectric response of a heterogeneous medium composed of a background matrix and embedded ellipsoidal inclusions. Initially, the individual inclusions are viewed as two-component confocally layered systems in which the surface phenomena occur in the outer shell. An approximation for a homogeneous inclusion is obtained by requiring the outer shell to be infinitesimally thin while the total numbers of unit charge carriers and unit dipoles within this region are conserved. The resulting expression for the response of an inclusion explicitly depends on both inclusion shape and size. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the effects of surface conduction on the dielectric response of a heterogeneous medium change significantly as a function of inclusion shape. © 1993 by Academic Press, Inc.