Electric current and related parameters

Engineers understand the importance of electricity and electrical power and the role they play in our everyday lives. As future engineers you should know what is meant by voltage, electric current, and know the difference between direct and alternating current You should also know the various sources of electricity and understand how electricity is generated. 

Every enpneer needs to understand the fimdamentak of electricity and mafftet-ism. Look around, and you tvill see all the devices, appliances, and machines that are driven by electrical power. The ol ective of this chapter is to introduce the fimdamentals of electricity. We will briefly discuss what is meant by electric charge, electric current (both akemating current, ac, and direct current, dc), electrical resistance, and voltage. We will ako define what is meant by an electrical circuit and its components. We will then look at the role of electric motors in our everyday lives and identify the factors that enpneers consider when selecting a motorfor a specific application. 

---

Conductivity is a very important parameter for any conductor. It is intimately related to other physical properties of the conductor, such as thermal conductivity (in the case of metals) and viscosity (in the case of liquid solutions). The strength of the electric current I in conductors is measured in amperes, and depends on the conductor, on the electrostatic field strengtfi E in tfie conductor, and on the conductor s cross section S perpendicular to the direction of current flow. As a convenient parameter that is independent of conductor dimensions, the current density is used, which is the fraction of current associated with the unit area of the conductor s cross section i = I/S (units A/cnF). 

In isotropic media 0 and S are related by = < , where the scalar parameter a is now referred to as the permittivity. In the international (SI) system it is given by s = erso. where o is the permittivity of vacuum (see Appendix fl) and e, is a dimensionless permittivity that characterizes the medium. Furthermore, according to Ohm s law the current is given by 7 = cr< , where a is the electrical conductivity. The relation V S3 = 0 is a mathematical statement of the observation that isolated magnetic poles do not exist. 

The definition of a sensor is that it reacts to a parameter (for example, the volume of the mercury pool in a thermometer increases with temperature), and the intensity of the reaction is in relation to the parameter - for example, the measurement of an electrical current that is in relation to the concentration of the analyte oxidised or reduced at the electrode surface. The parameter to be investigated is the concentration of the analyte, while the parameter measured is an electrical current. As for the real devices, ultimately most signals are being transformed into electric ones. Electroactive materials are consequently of utmost importance with respect to intelligent textiles. Of course, apart from technical considerations, concepts, materials, structures and treatments must focus on the appropriateness for use in or... 

One of the most important theoretical contributions of the 1970s was the work of Rudnick and Stern [26] which considered the microscopic sources of second harmonic production at metal surfaces and predicted sensitivity to surface effects. This work was a significant departure from previous theories which only considered quadrupole-type contributions from the rapid variation of the normal component of the electric field at the surface. Rudnick and Stern found that currents produced from the breaking of the inversion symmetry at the cubic metal surface were of equal magnitude and must be considered. Using a free electron model, they calculated the surface and bulk currents for second harmonic generation and introduced two phenomenological parameters, a and b , to describe the effects of the surface details on the perpendicular and parallel surface nonlinear currents. In related theoretical work, Bower [27] extended the early quantum mechanical calculation of Jha [23] to include interband transitions near their resonances as well as the effects of surface states. 

In practice, in all fuel cells that involve the utilization of 02 from air (Section 13.4.5), the oxygen reduction reaction [Eqs. (13.4) and (13.24)] is always rate determining for terrestrial applications. One can seejust how important it is to attempt to develop electrocatalysts for the cathodes of fuel cells on which the enhanced current density is high and Tafel slope is low and the efficiency of energy conversion, therefore, maximal. The direct relation of the mechanism of oxygen reduction and the associated Tafel parameters to the economics of electricity production and transportation is thus clearly seen. 

Defects include (dust) particles on or within suspended interdigitated seismic masses, leading to electrical shorts and to deviations in moments of inertia. Another example relates to the appearance of crystallographic defects such as dislocations or stacking faults in epitaxial superstructures, causing leakage currents that might impair sensor reliability in the field. Defect densities may of course vary within a wafer, from wafer to wafer, and from lot to lot. Unfortunately, at present not many models are available that link tolerance bands of functional parameters to specific defects and their tolerable density distributions. 

The permittivity of a vacuum Eq has SI units of (C /J m). The specific conductivity (Tc (l/( 2-m)) couples the electric field to the electric current density by J= OcE. From the relations described in (6b), it becomes evident that optically generated gratings correspond to spatial modulations of n, , or Xg. The parameters AA, , and Xg are tensorial. This means that the value of Xg depends on the material orientation to the electric field (anisotropic interactions). In general, P and E can be related by higher-rank susceptibility tensors, which describe anisotropic mediums. The refractive index n, and absorption coefficient K, can be joined to specify the complex susceptibility when K (Xp) 471/Xp such that... 

In a transition from an individual capillary to a real structured disperse system (membrane or diaphragm), one faces complications related to the actual structure of porous medium, in which the transfer of substance and electric current take place. In such systems all previously described basic relationships remain valid, but the radius and length of a single capillary are replaced with coefficients having particular dimensions, referred to as the structure parameters . In general, the determination of these structure parameters is a rather difficult task, but one may expect that in the description of electroosmotic transfer and the electric conductivity of the structured disperse systems these parameters are included in an identical way, similar to the identical dependence of IE and QE on r and /, as shown in eqs (V.32) and... 

The ion mobility spectrum has many forms that share one common feature The ion current intensity is measured as a function of an ion s mobility in a gas. As with other types of spectrometry, the ion mobility spectrum is obtained by correlating a change in a spectrometer s parameter with a physical property of the ions. In light spectrometry, the number of photons is recorded as a function of photon energy in mass spectrometry, the number of ions is recorded as a function of mass, and in ion mobility spectrometry (MS), the number of ions is recorded as a function of an ion s collision cross section, which is related to its mobility. The type of IMS depends on the instrumental parameter that is scanned to produce the intensity versus mobility spectrum. To understand the many types of mobility spectra, we must first consider the relation among mobility, electric field, and pressure. 

---